Sharjah is using artificial intelligence to help foreign investors identify investment opportunities within seconds, as the emirate seeks to attract more foreign direct investment despite mounting geopolitical uncertainty.
A new AI-powered platform, called Najm, will initially help investors find sites for factories and warehouses across the emirate. It was launched by the emirate's investment promotion agency, the Sharjah FDI Office, also known as Invest in Sharjah.
The AI agent is designed to help investors make “informed investment decisions”, Mohamed Al Mushrrakh, chief executive of Invest in Sharjah, said at the Sharjah Investment Forum on Wednesday.
In the first phase, Najm will help investors locate industrial sites and commercial real estate to build factories or set up warehousing facilities across the emirate.
For the introductory phase, Invest in Sharjah has teamed up with property portals Bayut and Property Finder, as well as e-commerce platform Dubizzle.
Najm will use commercial and industrial real estate data from the online portals and will provide instantaneous information to investors.
“Investors could struggle to find information they need to make an investment decision, so we asked ourselves a simple question: how can we deliver the right information at the right moment, when they need it,” Mr Al Mushrrakh told delegates at the Sharjah Investment Forum.
“Najm is the answer to that question. It is Invest in Sharjah's new tool for global investors.” The launch of the AI agent is driven by the need to cut the noise around the investment ecosystem in Sharjah and find new ways to bring foreign direct investment to the emirate.
Sharjah, the third largest emirate in the UAE after Abu Dhabi and Dubai, is home to 33 industrial zones. Sharjah’s real estate sector recorded more than 16,000 transactions during the first half of this year, with the emirate’s Muwaileh commercial area accounting for the highest value and volume of deals in the first six months, according to Invest in Sharjah data.
Sharjah received Dh7.74 billion in FDI last year, an 8.8 per cent increase on an annual basis. The count of projects in the emirate that received FDI also soared by 45 per cent year-on-year, to reach 142 developments, data showed.
In the second phase, the Najm platform will expand its sector horizon to cover a broader range of assets and investment opportunities in the healthcare and education sectors, Mr Al Mushrrakh said.
“What you have seen today is just the beginning ... Najm stands to cover investment opportunities across multiple sectors from industry to education and technology and beyond,” he said.
“We will continue to invest in human capital, technology, infrastructure and partnerships between the public and private sectors.
"Through these efforts, we can build a resilient economy, attract new investments into opportunities that we will build together. "