News

Riyadh Will Become Home To The Second Snap Creator Studio Globally

AR is expected to play a major role in making the metaverse come to life, and Snap could be an important player in the rapidly emerging successor to the internet.

Published

5 years ago

November 4, 2021

David Morelo

riyadh will become home to the second snap creator studio globally

Snap has announced that it will launch its second Snap Creator Studio in 2022, and the company chose Riyadh as its location.

The first Creator Studio was opened by Snap in Paris to support local creators in delivering experiences for Snapchat and provide publisher brands with a physical point of contact. The Riyadh location, the first of its kind in the region, will serve the same purpose.

Saudi Arabia was an easy choice for Snap because Snapchat has a monthly addressable reach of more than 19.5 million in the Kingdom, with 90 percent of its users being 13-34-year-olds, a demographic that advertisers see as highly attractive.

“The decision to open a Creator Studio in Saudi Arabia reflects the level of creativity we see on Snapchat amongst local users, the high levels of engagement on the app, and our desire to deepen the level of support that we can provide to the creator community and our business partners,” said Hussein Freijeh, General Manager for MENA at Snap.

Snap hopes that the Creator Studio will help attract talented content creators, Lens developers, and people interested in working on Snapchat Games, Minis, Layers, and other offerings. Drawing on its global network of creatives and technical experts, it will provide ample in-person and virtual skill-sharing opportunities.

“The new Creator Studio will thus help inspire the next generation of creators about the possibilities of using the Snap camera across the arts, education, media, and cultural sectors,” added Freijeh.

Also Read: SpaceX To Launch The Arab World’s Most Advanced Satellite In 2023

Inspiring the next generation of Snap creators shouldn’t be too difficult because over 80 percent of consumers in Saudi Arabia already believe that Augmented Reality (AR) will be both useful and important in the next five years, according to Snap’s own data.

Several major tech companies have very recently announced their push towards the metaverse, most notably Meta and Microsoft. AR is expected to play a major role in making the metaverse come to life, and Snap could be an important player in the rapidly emerging successor to the internet.

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

2 weeks 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.

Also Read: DJI Teases Dual-Camera Osmo Pocket 4P For 2026 Launch

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.