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Bybit And Ghaf Labs Partner To Advance MENA Web3 Adoption
The duo plans to co-develop startups, talent, and lifestyle use cases that bring crypto closer to everyday life.
Bybit, the world’s second-largest crypto exchange, has announced a multi-year strategic partnership with Dubai-based Web3 advisory firm Ghaf Labs to accelerate blockchain adoption and ecosystem development across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).
The Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) formalizes a collaboration designed to position the MENA region as a global Web3 hub, focusing on innovation, regulatory support, and real-world blockchain applications — from finance to hospitality.
“Our partnership with Ghaf Labs is rooted in a shared vision for the MENA region — one where crypto isn’t just adopted, but lived,” said Helen Liu, COO and Partner at Bybit. “From developer tooling to lifestyle integration, we’re building the bridges that bring crypto into everyday life”.
Through the partnership, Bybit and Ghaf Labs will offer equity-free grants, access to resources, and strategic guidance for startups working at the intersection of blockchain, AI, and sustainability — three pillars of the region’s digital transformation agenda.
Bybit and Ghaf Labs will also focus on nurturing a robust talent pipeline through university programs, bootcamps, and hackathons aimed at empowering developers and entrepreneurs in Arabic- and English-speaking communities.
“This partnership with Bybit reflects our shared commitment to advancing Web3 infrastructure, education, and institutional engagement,” said Feras Al Sadek, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Ghaf Labs. “Together, we aim to accelerate innovation and continue to position the UAE as a global hub for digital assets”.
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Beyond infrastructure and talent, the partnership also seeks to amplify crypto’s real-world utility through products like the Bybit Card, which connects digital assets to high-end experiences. Early use cases include premium travel perks with Grand Millennium Hotels in Dubai — part of a broader push to embed crypto in lifestyle, luxury, and day-to-day spending.
The collaboration will also strengthen Web3’s cultural footprint through co-branded regional events like the Crypto Polo Cup and Crypto Fight Night, blending sport, entertainment, and crypto to spark mainstream engagement.
With this MOU, Bybit and Ghaf Labs plan to further explore institutional integration, innovation funding, and sector-specific blockchain use cases, including applications in finance, hospitality, and education. The initiative complements the UAE’s broader strategy to establish itself as a digital-first economy.
News
NVIDIA Puts GPT-5.5 Codex In Hands Of 10,000 Staff
The chipmaker has significantly expanded OpenAI’s latest model across teams from engineering to HR under tight internal controls.
NVIDIA has started rolling out OpenAI’s GPT-5.5 model through the Codex coding agent to more than 10,000 employees, extending the tool well beyond software teams and into core business functions.
The deployment covers engineering, product, legal, marketing, finance, sales, HR, operations and developer programs. Staff are using Codex for coding, internal research and routine knowledge work as companies test whether AI agents can move from demos to daily use.
GPT-5.5 is running on NVIDIA’s GB200 NVL72 rack-scale systems, linking OpenAI’s newest model directly to the chipmaker’s latest infrastructure push. NVIDIA said the systems cut cost per million tokens by 35 times and raise token output per second per megawatt by 50 times versus earlier generations.
Inside the company, it says the effects are immediate. Debugging work that once took days is being finished in hours and experiments across large codebases that used to stretch over weeks are now handled overnight. Teams are also building features from natural-language prompts with fewer failed runs.
In a company-wide note urging staff to adopt the tool, CEO Jensen Huang wrote: “Let’s jump to lightspeed. Welcome to the age of AI.”
Security remains central to the rollout. Codex can connect through Secure Shell to approved cloud virtual machines, allowing agents to work with company data without moving it outside approved environments. NVIDIA said it assigned cloud VMs to employees so agents run in isolated sandboxes with full audit trails.
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The company added that the setup uses a zero-data-retention policy. Access to production systems is read-only through command-line tools and internal automation layers.
The move also highlights NVIDIA’s long relationship with OpenAI. NVIDIA said the partnership began in 2016, when Huang personally delivered the first DGX-1 AI supercomputer to OpenAI’s San Francisco office.
The two companies have since worked across hardware and model deployment. NVIDIA also said OpenAI plans to deploy more than 10 gigawatts of NVIDIA systems for future AI infrastructure.
For Gulf markets pouring money into sovereign AI and enterprise automation, the signal is clear: internal AI agents are moving from pilot phase to standard tooling.
NVIDIA Puts GPT-5.5 Codex In Hands Of 10,000 Staff
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