News
UAE-Based G42 Partners On World’s Fastest AI Supercomputer
The machine, named Condor Galaxy, has been built to assist with generative AI projects and is over 20 times faster than its predecessor.
Condor Galaxy, the world’s “fastest AI training supercomputer”, has been built with assistance from G42, a UAE-based technology holding group. The machine is actually a network of nine interconnected AI supercomputers developed by US-based AI company Cerebras Systems.
Located in Santa Clara, California, the massive machine boasts 4 exaFLOPs of power and a staggering 54 million cores that will significantly reduce AI processing times.
G42 will use Condor Galaxy to train AI models across a variety of data sets and has already created and tested Arabic bilingual chat, healthcare, and climate study applications.
“Collaborating with Cerebras to rapidly deliver the world’s fastest AI training supercomputer and laying the foundation for interconnecting a constellation of these supercomputers across the world has been enormously exciting,” said Talal Alkaissi, CEO of G42 Cloud. “The partnership brings together Cerebras’ extraordinary compute capabilities, together with G42’s multi-industry AI expertise,” he added.
Training the latest AI models requires enormous computing power and specialized programming skills. ChatGPT, for example, relies on 175 billion parameters and uses 10,000 Nvidia GPUs to train its AI algorithms.
Condor Galaxy brings genuine innovation to these kinds of processes, as all computing is performed entirely without complex distributed programming languages. This means that large projects no longer require weeks or even months spent distributing work over thousands of GPUs.
Also Read: Best Web Hosting Providers In The Middle East
“Many cloud companies have announced massive GPU clusters that cost billions of dollars to build but are extremely difficult to use. Distributing a single model over thousands of tiny GPUs takes months from dozens of people with rare expertise,” noted Andrew Feldman, CEO of Cerebras Systems. “CG-1 eliminates this challenge. Setting up a generative AI model takes minutes, not months, and can be done by a single person” he added.
The G42 and Cerebras partnership marks another step toward the democratization of AI. The combination of massive computing power and unique AI data sets should produce groundbreaking results and turbocharge hundreds of AI projects around the world.
News
Visa’s Return To Syria Starts With A Test And A Bank In Lebanon
Foreign visitors will be the first users to benefit, but whether Syria’s own banks and cardholders follow is still an open question.
Visa is returning to Syria. Its first live international card transaction in the country was a test rather than a launch, and the milestone event ran through a Lebanese bank.
The acquirer (the bank on the merchant’s side of a card payment) was Fransabank Lebanon, with Paymera as the other named partner. Nadim Moujaes, who heads a Fransabank Group subsidiary, describes the test as both the culmination of “longstanding efforts to link Syria back to international payment networks” and “the first step in a larger path”.
Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa makes the first electronic payment in Syria using a @Visa card at a store in Damascus, following the lifting of US sanctions on Syria. pic.twitter.com/lpAN7nQ6Fc
— Tech Magazine (@TechMGZN) August 27, 2026
“We are excited to have successfully tested live transactions today as we plan to enable international visitors to use their Visa cards while in Syria,” says Leila Serhan, Visa’s senior vice president and group country manager for the North Africa, Levant and Pakistan region. Although a significant first step, that plan doesn’t come with a hard date for when a visitor’s card will work normally.
Mohammed Safwat Raslan, governor of the Central Bank of Syria, says the test paves the way for international card acceptance in Syria and that maintaining strong compliance, risk management and operational controls will remain essential. Serhan likewise stresses that Visa has worked within applicable legal, regulatory and compliance requirements. For a test transaction, it seems there was a great deal of attention paid to the rules, with the entire operation being carefully managed.
Also Read: Lebanon’s 5G Era Begins With 150 Stations And A $1M Budget
The test is the latest step in a sequence that began in December 2025, when Visa announced a strategic roadmap to support Syria’s integration into the global digital economy. In February 2026 it hosted its first industry gathering of banks, ecosystem partners and policymakers in Damascus and, the same month, signed an agreement with Syria’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology in San Francisco.
Michel Kattouah, Paymera’s CEO, called the test “the return of international card acceptance,” but while that’s positive news, there’s no word yet on when a Syrian bank will issue a Visa card to a Syrian customer.
Visa’s Return To Syria Starts With A Test And A Bank In Lebanon
RØDE’s New DS3 Studio Arm Is Built For Heavier Creator Setups
Dubai Turns AI On Its Own Civil Service To Measure Productivity
Former Rockstar Director Dismisses GTA 6 Leaks As “Nothing Burger”
Qatar Airways Flies The World’s First Starlink-Equipped 787-9
Spotify Will Now Tell You If Your Favorite Artist Isn’t Real
Instagram Redraws Its Wordmark And The Internet Reads “Instagzam”
Anghami’s New Elite Program Starts With A Three-Decade Catalog
Qatar Is Getting Its First EV Plant, Built To Cope With Gulf Heat
Dubai’s aradus Wants AI To Run The Back Office Of Physical Trade
-
News3 weeks agoInstagram Redraws Its Wordmark And The Internet Reads “Instagzam”
-
News3 weeks agoAnghami’s New Elite Program Starts With A Three-Decade Catalog
-
News3 weeks agoQatar Is Getting Its First EV Plant, Built To Cope With Gulf Heat
-
News3 weeks agoDubai’s aradus Wants AI To Run The Back Office Of Physical Trade