NVIDIA, American multinational technology company, brought together technology companies, startups, developers, investors, and academia in Cairo to discuss the development of Egypt’s artificial intelligence ecosystem and opportunities to deploy AI across various sectors.
The NVIDIA AI Ecosystem Reception, held in partnership with RiseUp, comes as more than 200 Egyptian startups are enrolled in NVIDIA’s global Inception programme, while the company said its developer community in Egypt exceeds 46,000.
The event also highlighted an upcoming strategic partnership between NVIDIA and the Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA), aimed at supporting Egyptian startups and technology talent and developing local AI applications.
Paolo Guglielmini, Vice President of NVIDIA for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA), said Egypt has significant potential to expand its AI ecosystem, citing its large engineering and talent base and around 40,000 STEM graduates entering the workforce each year.
“AI development does not solely rely on investments or the availability of GPUs; it requires developers and talent capable of understanding challenges and deploying the right tools to turn them into practical solutions,” Guglielmini said.
He identified six layers needed to build a sustainable AI economy: talent, energy, infrastructure, chips, models, and applications.
Guglielmini also said that adapting AI models to specific business contexts, data, and operational challenges presents commercial opportunities for Egyptian developers and software companies.
The event featured AI applications developed by Egyptian startups, including AvidBeam, which works on AI-powered video analytics; Proteinea, which develops biological AI applications for protein design and healthcare; CyberFuse, which focuses on AI-enabled cybersecurity; and Marses Robotics, which develops autonomous systems and robotics for industrial and field applications.
Ahmed El-Zaher, CEO of ITIDA, said Egypt’s main strengths include its human capital and startup ecosystem, noting that local companies have developed AI applications despite constraints related to access to high-performance computing resources.
Speaking on behalf of the Minister of Communications and Information Technology, El-Zaher said ITIDA is preparing to collaborate with NVIDIA as a strategic partner to support the wider technology ecosystem.
He said the cooperation could help strengthen the capabilities of Egyptian startups and talent and support applications including large language models and speech-processing technologies.
“The transition of companies towards AI-driven business models is a promising area we look forward to leading,” El-Zaher said, adding that ITIDA is ready to work with NVIDIA to expand local talent and applications.
Layla Hassan, Managing Partner at Algebra Ventures, said AI alone does not constitute a sustainable competitive advantage for startups, pointing instead to domain expertise, proprietary data, and network effects as important factors in building defensible businesses.
Mohamed Elkerdawy, Chief AI Officer at Proteinea, said the company is developing AI-powered products aimed at addressing real-world challenges and is seeking to expand into global markets.
The event also included a presentation by Ahmed Mostafa, NVIDIA’s Regional AI Adoption Lead for the Middle East and Africa, on how developers can use NVIDIA software tools to accelerate AI development.
Startup executives also discussed practical applications of AI. Hany El-Gebaly, Founder and CEO of AvidBeam, said video analytics can be applied beyond security and surveillance to areas such as business intelligence, operational efficiency, and safety.
Mohamed Gebreel, Managing Director at CyberFuse, said the company is developing specialised AI solutions for cybersecurity, including a “cyber brain” designed to assist security analysts in investigating and responding to attacks while giving organisations greater control over the models and systems they use.
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