Fans gathered on the Champs-Élysées as the Esports World Cup 2026 celebrated creators, Clubs, players and communities through France’s largest free public celebration of gaming and esports. The festival featured the first public unveiling of an official Esports Nations Cup national kit, revealing Team France’s jersey, designed in collaboration with adidas, ahead of the inaugural tournament in Saudi Arabia this November. More national jerseys, including Saudi Arabia’s, will be unveiled in the lead-up to the competition.

Agthia Group PJSC (AGTHIA: UH), one of the region’s leading food and beverage companies, today reported its first-half and second-quarter of 2026 results, reflecting the growing impact of its multi-year transformation, with stronger cash generation, a materially healthier balance sheet, and a 14.4% increase in the interim dividend. Group Revenue increased 7.4% year-on-year to AED 2.6 billion, underpinned by one-off sales under the UAE food security program. EBITDA climbed 35.8% to AED 310.5 million, with EBITDA Margin expanding 250 basis points to 11.9%, while Net Profit reached AED 121.4 million, up 147.4% year-over-year. Group revenue increased 11.9% year-on-year to AED 1.3 billion. EBITDA increased 172.5% to AED 117.2 million, with margin expanding 542 basis points to 9.2%, while Net Profit reached AED 24.5 million.

As Director, Dr. Hillings will bring this vision to life leading the museum’s strategic direction, overseeing its inaugural exhibitions and programmes, and establishing an institution that is rooted in Abu Dhabi and connected to the world, one that connects cultures, inspires people and celebrates art from the 1960s to the present.

Investor and Catalyst Wire principal Yazan Al Homsi points to the results as validation of a long-held chemical recycling thesis. “The number that matters most to me isn’t the yield percentage, it’s the two hours it took the team to get back to steady state after they deliberately threw the process off balance,” said Yazan Al Homsi. “That kind of process control only comes from repetition, not a single good test.”

The Ajman Department of Tourism, Culture, and Media has achieved a new international milestone after receiving the ‘Star of Outstanding’ Recognition at the 2026 Global Challenge for World Heritage Education Innovative Cases (AWHEIC), organised by the World Heritage Institute of Training and Research for the Asia and the Pacific Region (WHITR-AP) in cooperation with UNESCO National Commissions. The Department was recognised for its ‘Promotional Stories’ initiative, which leverages storytelling to showcase cultural heritage and raise awareness of its significance, reflecting Ajman’s growing role in advancing innovative approaches in heritage preservation and education.

PCG Global, a clean energy platform focused on renewable energy infrastructure, has announced the closing of its Pre-Series A financing round, led by GenZero, a wholly owned Temasek platform focused on accelerating decarbonisation globally. The company was founded in Singapore by the team behind PCG Power, one of China’s leading distributed energy operators, with more than 2GW of operational assets. PCG Global draws on this track record to replicate a full-cycle “development–construction–operation–asset securitisation–reinvestment” model across international markets.

ICC Loyalty, serving 30+ banks and 11 million customers across 10+ countries, joins Mintoak. The combined entity now partners with more than 50 banks across 20+ countries. Combined annual revenue exceeds US$30 million with a profitability margin exceeding 30%.

Aquatech today announced the acquisition of UAE-headquartered Metito Chemical Solutions (“METICHEM”). The company, now known as Metichem, an Aquatech company, brings together specialty chemicals and operations & maintenance expertise to help customers achieve their environmental and operational goals across the Middle East, North Africa, and Southeast Asia. Combining Aquatech’s global project experience with Metichem’s deep local roots will enable the two companies to deliver more complete water lifecycle solutions. Both Aquatech and Metichem draw on decades-long legacies of success across the Middle East and Southeast Asia, with both companies having executed noteworthy projects in the UAE, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and Indonesia.

HUMAIN has made a strategic investment in Saudi AI company MOZN, combining HUMAIN’s full AI stack with MOZN’s enterprise AI products and Forward Deployed Engineering expertise to accelerate secure, production-scale AI deployments for financial institutions as well as public sector organizations. This investment marks one of the first made through HUMAIN Ventures and represents HUMAIN’s first investment in a Saudi company. The partnership also represents one of the first strategic engagements under HUMAIN’s newly launched Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI) sector, establishing a flagship collaboration to accelerate sovereign AI adoption across financial institutions. Co-developed enterprise AI solutions will be made available through the HUMAIN ONE AI Agent Marketplace, enabling organizations to securely deploy and scale trusted AI applications. The first jointly developed solutions and customer deployments will be unveiled at LEAP Riyadh, with broader commercial availability planned for H2 2026.

Roborock, the global leader in home robotics, announced that its flagship robot vacuum, Saros 20, is now officially available across the UAE and Saudi Arabia. As the brand’s flagship offering, Saros 20 tackles the unique cleaning challenges faced by Gulf households every day with its exceptional threshold-climbing capability, deep carpet cleaning performance, and intelligent navigation system – redefining what “clean” means for modern homes.

Across the Middle East, the most treasured moments arrive with samboosa, pakora, and kunafa. Now enjoy that crunch with 90% less oil, zero fry smells, and a kitchen cool enough for guests and energy bills low. COSORI’s Dynamic DC Motor with five fan speeds and nine presets cooks 33% faster—no preheat, no oven-like heat, essential for Gulf summers. The wide temperature range (30°C–230°C) proofs dough, dehydrates, roasts, and air fries. An angled one-touch panel, dishwasher-safe basket, and generous capacity feed a family of five without a bulky dual-basket. Engineered to honour the art of cooking, every air fryer delivers falafel, kibbeh, and samosa with the same shattering crunch, minus heavy fat. Independent tests confirm 90% less oil while preserving the texture Gulf palates demand—heritage, reimagined healthier, cooler, faster.

STARTRADER today announced the launch of 31 new US Share CFDs and ETF CFDs, available on the trading platform from August 3 and on the STARTRADER app from August 5, spanning semiconductors, AI infrastructure, optical networking, and nuclear. The new instruments will reference companies and funds across hardware, power, and connectivity infrastructure in the technology sector.

Dr. Ali bin Amer Al Shidhani, Oman’s deputy minister for communications and information technology, toured Kingsoft Office’s booth at the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference and tested the company’s latest AI agents-Lingxi Professional and WPS Comate. Both sides discussed WPS’s integrated cloud-and-device architecture, how WPS 365 could meet data-security requirements for government and enterprise clients in the Middle East, and the outlook for AI office software adoption in Oman. Dr. Al Shidhani praised Kingsoft Office’s approach to enterprise AI—keeping it under control, and putting it to real use. He said he hopes to bring WPS’s AI tools into Oman’s telecommunications sector and government digitization efforts, and to deepen digital-industry ties across the Gulf.

Over 100 countries and territories will wear custom adidas national jerseys at the Esports Nations Cup (ENC), equipping every team competing across 16 of the world’s most popular esports titles. The inaugural four-week event is set to take place starting November 2, 2026 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. National team jerseys will be revealed in the coming weeks.

Over the same period, the centre delivered 1,981 awareness lectures, organised 788 student activities, 103 awareness exhibitions, 76 interactive competitions, and 135 awareness campaigns, educational visits and training programmes. The centre’s preventive approach has produced measurable results. Surveys showed a 96.9% improvement in student behaviour, according to parents, while participant satisfaction with the Summer Student Programme reached 95.3%.

“Our goal is to enable the global flow of compute, and that means every cluster we deliver has to perform, no matter where the capacity comes from. Standardizing on WEKA NeuralMesh has given our customers hyperscaler-grade consistency with open-market flexibility at the storage and memory layer, where performance is won or lost,” said Wil Moushey, CEO at Andromeda. “Idle GPUs are throttling the pace of AI innovation. WEKA helps us ensure every GPU we manage is earning its keep.”

e& today announced its financial results for the first half of 2026 (H1 2026), delivering strong financial and business performance that reflects the Group’s ability to sustain growth across its home market and international operations. This performance was driven by a clear strategy focused on core businesses, comprehensive digital transformation, and accelerating AI-powered innovation. During the first six months of this year, e& recorded strong growth in its consolidated revenue, reaching AED 38.1 billion, representing an increase of 11.6 per cent year-on-year (YoY). Consolidated net profit reached AED 6.0 billion, marking YoY growth of 2.4 per cent, excluding the gain on the sale of Khazna and the impact of the Maroc Telecom (MT) settlement in 2025.

Innodisk, a leading global AI solution provider, introduces the DDR5 12800 MT/s MRDIMM to support the rapid growth of generative AI, large language models (LLMs), and robotics applications. With an industry-leading data rate of 12800 MT/s, this advanced memory module delivers exceptional bandwidth efficiency and scalability to meet the growing processing demands of AI-driven innovations. Breaking the Memory Wall with Advanced Architecture The growing complexity of AI and HPC workloads has exposed the limitations of traditional memory architectures, often referred to as the “memory wall”—a bottleneck where memory bandwidth fails to keep up with processing speeds, leading to inefficiencies. The DDR5 12800 MT/s MRDIMM overcomes this challenge with its innovative Multiplexed Registering Clock Driver (MRCD) and Multiplexed Data Buffer (MDB) architecture. By enabling simultaneous two-rank access, this breakthrough design increases bandwidth by 60% compared to traditional DDR5 8000 MT/s RDIMMs, significantly improving data transfer speeds and computational efficiency. By reducing the load on the memory controller and lowering latency, this module enhances AI model training, large language models (LLMs), and robotic automation applications.

“I am honored to join the Continuity Biosciences Board of Directors at such a pivotal time in the Company’s development,” said Papoutsis. “Continuity has assembled an outstanding management team, scientific advisors, and Board while building an innovative portfolio of precision drug delivery technologies across multiple therapeutic areas. I look forward to supporting the Company’s long-term strategy, helping expand its strategic partnerships, and contributing to its missions of improving outcomes for patients.”

LG expands its 2026 premium display portfolio with next generation high-resolution monitors built for ultimate immersion. The 2026 line-up introduces three premium monitors with resolutions at or above 5K, including a massive 52-inch panoramic screen and an award-winning 39-inch OLED display. Built to meet the growing demand for high-resolution setups, these monitors offer industry-leading refresh rates and sharp visual clarity.