Inception42, a G42 company and the region’s leading innovator of AI-powered products and solutions, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with NXT Holding, an AI-native holding company owned by Sahm Holding and headquartered in Abu Dhabi.
The agreement lays the foundation for a broad-based strategic collaboration aimed at accelerating responsible and impactful AI adoption across the UAE and international markets.
The MoU establishes a comprehensive partnership framework spanning five integrated pillars: AI consulting, training and upskilling, enterprise AI solutions, product distribution, and joint business development.
By combining Inception42’s sovereign, enterprise-grade AI capabilities with NXT Holding’s growing ecosystem of operating companies and investment reach, the partnership is designed to shepherd organisations from strategic advisory and initial engagement through to full-scale deployment and operational integration.
The signing ceremony brought together Ashish Koshy, Chief Executive Officer of Inception42, and Sara AlAhbabi, Director of SPVs and Portfolio Relations at NXT Holding. The partnership reflects a shared conviction that the UAE’s artificial intelligence ambitions require deep institutional alignment between technology builders and market enablers.
Sheikha Fatma bint Tahnoon bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, Founder and Chairwoman of Sahm Holding, framed the collaboration within the broader context of the nation’s strategic direction.
“The UAE has placed artificial intelligence at the centre of its national vision, and partnerships of this nature are how that vision becomes capability,” she said. “This agreement reflects the strength of our institutions, the alignment of their purpose, and the nation’s determination to lead in technologies that will define the future.”
Bridging AI exploration and execution
Inception42, which recently rebranded from Inception to signal its strategic evolution from a research-focused institute into a sovereign AI product company, has positioned itself at the frontier of agentic AI deployment.
The company develops and delivers AI-native enterprise applications purpose-built for government and enterprise environments — a trajectory that aligns naturally with NXT Holding’s mandate to invest in and scale AI-first operating companies.
“Inception is built to deliver sovereign, enterprise-grade AI at scale,” said Ashish Koshy, CEO of Inception42.
“Partnering with NXT Holding expands our ability to reach organisations that are ready to move from AI exploration to AI execution. This MoU enables us to combine our product and platform capabilities with NXT Holding’s market access and investment expertise, creating a powerful channel to drive measurable AI impact across the UAE and beyond.”
Koshy’s vision reflects Inception42’s broader ambition: to transform world-leading AI research into live, sovereign deployments embedded in the operational fabric of government and industry.
A structural response
For NXT Holding, the agreement represents a deliberate expansion of its delivery capabilities within a rapidly evolving landscape. The holding company was conceived as a direct response to the structural transformation that artificial intelligence is bringing to economies and institutions, and the partnership with Inception42 deepens its ability to execute on that founding thesis.
Fahmi Abubakar, Managing Director of Sahm Holding, underscored the strategic rationale behind the collaboration. “NXT Holding was built for the structural shift that artificial intelligence represents in how economies and institutions operate,” Abubakar said.
“Our responsibility is to help governments and enterprises navigate that shift. The agreement with Inception expands on our delivery commitment, and we look forward to the value it will create.”
An integrated approach
The five-pillar structure of the MoU reflects a deliberate end-to-end philosophy. Rather than pursuing isolated initiatives, the partnership is architected to create compounding value across the full AI adoption lifecycle:
- AI consulting — providing strategic advisory services that help organisations assess readiness, define roadmaps, and identify high-impact AI use cases
- Training and upskilling — building institutional capacity through tailored programmes that equip workforces with applied AI competencies
- Enterprise AI solutions — co-developing and deploying sovereign, agentic AI applications tailored to government and enterprise requirements
- Product distribution — leveraging NXT Holding’s portfolio network to extend the market reach of Inception42’s AI products and platforms
- Joint business development — pursuing shared commercial opportunities across the UAE, the wider region, and select international markets
By threading these pillars together, Inception42 and NXT Holding aim to reduce the friction that typically separates AI strategy from AI results — offering a cohesive pathway from ambition to operational reality.
