News

BitOasis Secures $30 Million In Funding To Accelerate Growth

BitOasis currently allows its users to buy and sell more than 20 cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Ripple.

Published

5 years ago

October 14, 2021

David Morelo

bitoasis secures $30 million in funding to accelerate growth

BitOasis, the largest cryptocurrency platform in the MENA region, has successfully raised $30 million in a Series B round to accelerate its growth while ensuring high standards of regulatory compliance.

The platform was founded in 2015 by Ola Doudin, and it’s headquartered in the United Arab Emirates. Thanks to its founder’s visionary ability to predict the increasingly important role cryptocurrencies are playing in the world, it had been perfectly positioned to take advantage of the cryptocurrency boom.

The funding round was co-led by Chicago-based VC firm Jump Capital, along with Wamda, the largest growth stage fund in the MENA region. Other investors that joined in include Alameda Research, Global Founders Capital, Pantera Capital, Digital Currency Group, and NXMH.

“The company perfectly embodies the elements we seek when investing in international crypto exchanges,” says Peter Johnson, a partner leading Jump Capital’s crypto strategy. “An exceptional team that deeply understands the market, a focus on regulatory compliance, and an ability to build a leading consumer brand”.

According to the official funding announcement, BitOasis wants to solidify its presence and refine its product offering in the countries the cryptocurrency platform already operates in while also expanding to nearby countries. BitOasis is also building strategic partnerships with the public sector to raise awareness around crypto safety, one of the biggest roadblocks to its wider adoption.

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“Our latest investment round serves as a vote of confidence in the BitOasis growth story,” commented Ola Doudin. “It further speaks to the state of interest in the MENA region’s growing crypto ecosystem, with global investors and venture capital heavyweights backing the region’s home-grown businesses”.

BitOasis currently allows its users to buy and sell more than 20 cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Ripple, with UAE Dirham (AED) and Saudi Riyal (SAR). To start trading, all that users have to do is sign up, verify their identity, and securely deposit funds through one of the supported options.

News

At I/O 2026, Sundar Pichai Concedes AI Must Deliver Real Value

Gemini 3.5, a personal agent called Spark, agentic shopping, and Android XR eyewear are all aimed at making AI feel useful, not just impressive.

Published

6 days ago

May 20, 2026

Nour Nasir

at io 2026 sundar pichai concedes ai must deliver real value

Google

Google’s annual I/O developer conference (I/O 2026) has recently become a status update on the same question: can the company turn its AI spending into products people use every day? This year, chief executive Sundar Pichai described Google as being in a phase of hyper progress, while conceding this is the part of the cycle where people want to see real value in the products they use on a day-to-day basis.

The strategy on display was to push agents — AI systems that act on a user’s behalf — into nearly every Google product at once. Search now has an “intelligent search box” that returns generated explainer videos alongside links. Gmail, Docs, YouTube and Maps are gaining their own agent layers, including a Docs Live feature that turns spoken instructions into drafted text with citations.

Two new models, Gemini 3.5 and a cheaper Gemini 3.5 Flash, arrived the same day. Google says 900 million people now use Gemini, and that more than 50 billion images have been generated with it. The pricing tier names are likely to confuse buyers: a new AI Ultra plan launches at $100 a month, while the older Gemini AI Ultra drops from $250 to $200.

The flashier announcements were Gemini Omni, a video generator pitched as a more realistic answer to OpenAI’s discontinued Sora 2, and Gemini Spark, a personal agent that handles recurring tasks across a user’s Google account. A new universal shopping cart lets agents complete purchases across multiple retailers from inside Google itself, placing the company between the merchant and the buyer, and also owning the checkout.

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Google also confirmed its Android XR eyewear, built with Samsung and frames from Warby Parker and Gentle Monster. Audio-only glasses ship this autumn; a display-equipped version, which would superimpose live translations into the wearer’s field of view, is still in development. Both sets translate, however only the display version shows you the result.

What Pichai did not resolve is the bargain underneath all this. An agent is only useful to the degree it knows your calendar, your inbox, your shopping history and your physical surroundings. Google has now confirmed that, in time, the same context may carry advertising.