Tarjama and Arabic.AI CEO Nour Al Hassan has called for AI sovereignty in the MENA region following leaked comments from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei calling Gulf leaders “dictators” and describing regional funding as a “real downside.”
In leaked Slack messages first reported by Wired, the AI leader said that taking funding from Middle East leaders; specifically the UAE and Qatar; would line the pockets of “dictators.” He wrote that “no bad person should ever benefit from our success” while saying this was “a pretty difficult principle to run a business on.”
Nour responded in a LinkedIn article, saying the comments confirmed “something many of us in the region already know: We cannot rely on others to build the tools we need. Not for our language. Not for our data. And not for our future.”
The CEO argued that global recognition shouldn’t depend on Silicon Valley validation. “Too often, global recognition is treated like a stamp you collect from the U.S.,” she wrote. “If you build for your own markets, in your own language, on your own terms, suddenly you’re ‘regional.’ But relevance should not depend on proximity.”
She positioned her Arabic.AI platform as part of a broader regional movement toward tech independence. “We are not waiting to be included in someone else’s roadmap. We are building our own stack together,” she said, emphasizing that the region is “no longer experimenting” but “deploying, collaborating, and scaling.”
Founded in 2008 by Nour, Dubai-headquartered Tarjama recently raised $15 million in Series A funding to scale its Arabic.AI platform, which offers enterprise AI solutions through its Pronoia large language model specifically designed for Arabic. The company has worked with governments and top consultancies across 30+ markets.
She called for a “multi-regional, multi-lingual, and multi-polar” future for AI, arguing that MENA-built models should be considered global if they “serve cross-border businesses, protect local data, and scale responsibly.”
“It’s time to stop asking what it takes to be accepted. It’s time to define what it means to lead,” she concluded.
- Saudi’s Orbii raises $3.6 million in Prosus-led seed to help banks and fintechs launch SME lending - September 8, 2025
- Egypt’s TradeHub shuts down, returns remaining capital to investors after failing to achieve product-market fit - September 7, 2025
- Dubai’s WheelsOn raises $12.5 million in debt and equity for its deposit-free car rental platform - September 7, 2025
