News
Carasti Expands To Saudi Arabia After Raising $2 Million
To celebrate its recent expansion, Carasti is launching with a Ramadan offer of 50% off the first-month subscription for new Saudi subscribers.
From March 23, 2022, on-demand car subscription service Carasti is available in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The expansion of the UAE-based company into the Kingdom comes after a successful bridge round that helped Carasti raise $2 million from venture firms Net Ventures and Rua Growth.
The bridge round will soon be followed by Carasti’s Series A funding round, which should help it further drive growth and establish itself as a dominant player in the car rental and leasing market in Saudi Arabia, which is expected to reach $2.5 billion by 2026, according to a report by Mordor Intelligence.
“After a successful 2.5 years of rapid growth in the UAE, we are now making it possible for Saudi drivers to get a car without any of the hassles of ownership; our full-subscription model looks set to become the go-to brand for the Kingdom’s automotive needs starting today and into the future” said Claudio Esposito-Aiardo, CEO of Carasti.
Carasti offers a growing selection of new and nearly-new cars, and its subscription process takes less than three minutes to complete. Customers can choose from all-inclusive subscriptions ranging from 1 to 24 months, with prices starting at just SAR 1,799 ($479 USD) per month. The few required documents can be conveniently uploaded using the Carasti app, available to download on both the App Store and Google Play Store.
Also Read: 4 Smartphones Coming To The Middle East This Spring
To celebrate its recent expansion, Carasti is launching with a Ramadan offer of 50 percent off the first-month subscription for new Saudi subscribers. To take advantage of the offer, simply enter the code “WOW50” when signing up. After completing the quick and easy sign-up process, the selected vehicle can be ready in as little as 4 hours.
All subscriptions include not only the car itself but also all other expenses typically associated with car ownership, such as insurance, warranty, maintenance, and around-the-clock roadside assistance and delivery.
News
Google Releases Veo 2 AI Video Tool To MENA Users
The state-of-the-art video generation model is now available in Gemini, offering realistic AI-generated videos with better physics, motion, and detail.
Starting today, users of Gemini Advanced in the MENA region — and globally — can tap into Veo 2, Google’s next-generation video model.
Originally unveiled in 2024, Veo 2 has now been fully integrated into Gemini, supporting multiple languages including Arabic and English. The rollout now brings Google’s most advanced video AI directly into the hands of everyday users.
Veo 2 builds on the foundations of its predecessor with a more sophisticated understanding of the physical world. It’s designed to produce high-fidelity video content with cinematic detail, realistic motion, and greater visual consistency across a wide range of subjects and styles. Whether recreating natural landscapes, human interactions, or stylized environments, the model is capable of interpreting and translating written prompts into eight-second 720p videos that feel almost handcrafted.
Users can generate content directly through the Gemini platform — either via the web or mobile apps. The experience is pretty straightforward: users enter a text-based prompt, and Veo 2 returns a video in 16:9 landscape format, delivered as an MP4 file. These aren’t just generic clips — they can reflect creative, abstract, or highly specific scenarios, making the tool especially useful for content creators, marketers, or anyone experimenting with visual storytelling.
Also Read: Getting Started With Google Gemini: A Beginner’s Guide
To ensure transparency, each video is embedded with SynthID — a digital watermark developed by Google’s DeepMind. The watermark is invisible to the human eye but persists across editing, compression, and sharing. It identifies the video as AI-generated, addressing concerns around misinformation and media authenticity.
While Veo 2 is still in its early phases of public rollout, the technology is part of a broader push by Google to democratize advanced AI tools. With text-to-image, code generation, and now video creation integrated into Gemini, Google is positioning the platform as a full-spectrum creative assistant.
Access to Veo 2 starts today and will continue expanding in the coming weeks. Interested users can try it out at gemini.google.com or through the Gemini app on Android and iOS.
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