News

Careem Launches Lebanon Aid Drive With WFP

Donations will be matched through in-app giving, food orders, olive oil, and remittances. However, the end date and matching cap have been left unstated.

Published

3 weeks ago

May 1, 2026

Joanna Melki

careem launches lebanon aid drive with wfp

Careem launched a fundraising campaign with the World Food Program on April 30 to support emergency food assistance in Lebanon, the Dubai-based super app said.

The campaign, called Seeds for Lebanon, routes donations through several Careem services. Customers can give directly through an in-app Donate feature, with Careem stating that 100% of those contributions will go to WFP operations in Lebanon. Through Careem Food, AED 2 from every order at six participating restaurants — The Good Bowl, Wrapped, Sofret Beirut, Oventine by Al Safadi, Al Safadi, and Manoushe Street — will be directed to relief. Careem Quik will donate 100% of profits from Lebanese olive oil purchases, and Careem Pay will waive fees on transfers to Lebanon for the duration of the campaign. Careem also said it will match all donations made through the initiative.

Mudassir Sheikha, the company’s chief executive and co-founder, said the matching arrangement was meant to multiply the impact of every contribution made. Bashar Al Hammami, head of WFP partnerships in the UAE, said working with Careem allowed donations to be converted into food assistance for those in greatest need.

Careem described the launch as an extension of its relief activity beyond Gaza, citing previous donation drives that it said raised more than AED 2.2 million and were tied to nearly 47,500 food orders.

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Several operational details were left unspecified. The announcement did not state when the campaign ends, whether the donation match is capped, which Careem markets can participate, which corridors qualify for zero-fee Careem Pay transfers, or how quickly funds will be passed to WFP. It also did not clarify whether the 100% pledge applies after payment-processing or platform costs, or whether the matching commitment covers only direct in-app donations or extends to restaurant orders and olive oil contributions as well.

Careem, which describes itself as the “Everything App for the Middle East,” said the campaign is live across its platforms. The company says it operates in more than 70 cities across 10 countries, from Morocco to Pakistan.

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

4 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.