The UAE just ranked second globally for AI talent migration behind only the United States. While the world debates who wins the AI race, this country is quietly pulling in the people building it. Joining me now is Sam Huber, CEO MENA and Global President at Napster. Sam, welcome to Wall Street to Mena.
Thank you so much for having me.
We're talking about 10 million people in the country, and the UAE is now second in the world for AI talent migration. How is the country pulling that off?
It comes from a strong government strategy for AI — developing the infrastructure, like G42 in Abu Dhabi, to power sovereign AI, but also to create real use cases. Builders, entrepreneurs, and developers know that if they come to the region, they will find customers, they will find use cases, they will find ways to deploy and sell their technology.
You just workshopped AI with 50 UAE business leaders. What shocked you the most?
Three things. First, most business leaders still think of AI as a way to cut costs and find efficiencies, rather than as a way to grow their business. Second, the ROI question is becoming increasingly important — how much do we need to invest to see real results? Third, risks. So far we haven't spoken much about the risk of AI — what it actually takes to use AI, to share your data with third-party systems. More and more business leaders are starting to wake up to that.
Business leaders see AI as a cost cutter, not a growth engine. Why hasn't that changed?
It's the low-hanging fruit. There's a lot of narrative in the press that AI is going to replace people and put people out of jobs. We don't think about it that way — we see it more as a way to augment what we're doing. It's almost a mentality shift that needs to happen. The good news is that in this country, most business owners don't want to let go of their people. They want to retain their staff and grow their businesses. It's more about awareness that AI can actually help them do that.
We've seen businesses say they've replaced entire departments with AI. Is that actually happening?
The job replacement hasn't really happened at scale yet. Every phase of technology in the past has always created more jobs overall — you still need people to support and build the technology. Of course, we expect a lot of entry-level jobs to be replaced over the next 5 to 10 years. But so far, the net benefit has been job creation.
Feeding data to AI tools — what's the worst that can happen?
I like to use this analogy. Imagine running a business before the internet, and someone comes to your door with a big box and asks all your employees to put all your files, customer data, IP, and trade secrets into it — and then leaves with the box and takes it to another country. You'd never do that. But that's literally what's happening with AI right now. AI labs are essentially asking companies to ingest everything that makes them what they are — customer relationships, know-how, processes — into their systems, in exchange for a better output. That's a massive risk. Companies are potentially putting themselves out of business.
Are companies waking up to this?
Still very early. Everyone got so excited about what AI can do that they let their guard down. It's easier to just connect another tool, connect your emails, your calendar, your CRM. But what's the cost of that? What's the value exchange? I think this region is one of the first to think seriously about data sovereignty — keeping data local and minimising that risk.
Can you explain what the UAE is doing on data sovereignty specifically?
Data sovereignty means that data should be stored and processed within the country. At least that way, you have your own models running from a data centre that you control, and you ensure that what gets shared and processed by AI stays within your jurisdiction and doesn't go to another government where you have no control over what happens to it. The infrastructure the UAE has put in place over the last couple of years is now a significant differentiator for people choosing to build here.
What are business leaders actually asking for — AI hosted locally, not in the cloud somewhere?
The baseline is sovereignty — ensuring data, processing, and AI models are deployed within the country. On top of that, you can deploy solutions that are more data-friendly. What my company does, for example, is ensure that people actually own their data as opposed to having it used to train models by a third party.
You call it the elastic organisation. Sell that in one line.
An elastic organisation can grow and shrink with demand. When you have a big marketing campaign, you can deploy a team of AI agents to do the work. When you don't need it, you don't need to engage them. Businesses are no longer constrained by resources — they can scale to meet demand in a way that is far more cost-efficient.
And you were an F1 engineer — Ferrari and Mercedes. What did you carry from the pit lane into the startup world?
Attention to detail. In Formula One, a tenth of a second is the difference between first and tenth. You cannot leave anything to chance. You have to do everything to the best of your ability. That, and the work ethic of building under extreme pressure — both are things I carried directly into building a startup.
Thank you so much, Sam.
Thank you for having me.
