Dubai Future Foundation’s Belhoul goes full speed ahead

As this week’s World Governments Summit was wrapping up in Dubai, Khalfan Belhoul’s head was buzzing with all things AI.

Having hosted TIME Magazine’s TIME100 AI Impact Awards Gala at the Museum of the Future on Monday night, Belhoul, CEO of the Dubai Future Foundation, followed it up on Tuesday by signing a partnership pact with IBM Chairman and CEO Arvind Krishna to bolster the use of artificial intelligence tools in the wealthy Gulf financial center.

IBM will also co-publish so-called white papers with the Dubai Future Foundation in April to coincide with the inaugural Dubai AI Week. Belhoul promised more “very interesting announcements” in the coming days that will be “an example for the world.”

As head of a foundation that runs a $300 million venture capital fund and built the city’s iconic Museum of the Future – a massive seven-story elliptical loop with a silvery translucent skin covered in Arabic calligraphy – Belhoul has a challenging mission.

Appointed eight years ago by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, the Ruler of Dubai and Vice President of the UAE, Belhoul was tasked to “imagine, inspire and design Dubai’s future.” To that end, the Boston University graduate with a master’s degree in e-commerce, assembled a team of scientists, researchers and startup investors to plot Dubai’s long-term roadmap.

“If we think that we will get it right every single time, then we will still not be a leading city of the future,” Belhoul told The Circuit. “Our platform has been built for us to pivot and to make mistakes.”

The interview was edited for length and clarity.

Why does Dubai need a special foundation to chart its future?

When the Dubai Future Foundation was set up – I’ll be very frank with you – we had no clue how to set it up. The idea was that we needed to institutionalize future foresight. Fast forward now, around eight to nine years since the formation, we have a foresight team, we have a think tank, and we have an execution team. I think this shows you the balance between staying up to speed when it comes to what’s happening in the future and of course, you know most of the trends – and the hope and the fear at the same time. Whether it’s climate, AI, mobility, you name it. But then, how can you take all that and create a platform that is for the betterment of humanity? This is what we do.

Critics say you’re a dreamer and that many of the DFF’s ideas are unlikely to ever be put into practice. Are they right?

if you look at our projects, you would see that many of them have seen light and become an example for the world. And what I would really say to those people is that if we think this way, we will never be a leading city of the future. If we think that we will get it right every single time, then we will still not be a leading city of the future. Our platform has been built for us to pivot and to make mistakes.

If you look at investors in venture capital and their portfolio of investments in technology, 80 percent of their portfolio goes bust. But it’s that one story that creates history for them that recovers the whole portfolio. So you can see us working in the same way, where we create a safe environment to test and fail – as long as no one gets hurt or injured or nothing serious happens. Then, we double down on the winning bets and set an example for the world.

Look ahead. How will the DFF look 20 years from now?

Very futuristic. Constantly evolving. Our entity should grow in importance – not because I’m part of it, but because having an entity that becomes a think tank for Dubai and for the UAE to share a view on where the future is evolving is always a need because the future will continue to evolve.

And the interesting – I wouldn’t say scary – part is that this evolution is happening at a much faster pace. If you look at the industrial revolutions and the change from one to the other, you realize that the gap between one revolution to the next is shrinking. You see that our phones are advancing dramatically year after year. Let alone the evolution of AI, quantum computing, and robotics. So you can only imagine where we’re heading.

Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh and other parts of the region are both friendly neighbors and well-financed rivals. How do you address the competition?

One word: Synergy. Second word: Complementing each other. I think Dubai and the UAE – our population is not big enough for a company to scale. Neither is any other Arab country in the world. It’s the whole region that should benefit from this growth. Nowadays, when you set up a business on your phone, with one click of a button, the world becomes your market. So, how do you really connect that world together? Connect the Arab world to ensure that those businesses can scale in a seamless way. And that’s the vision – collaboration, inclusivity, unity – working with one another and creating a bigger impact.