News

Warner Bros. Discovery Invests In OSN Streaming To Expand MENA Reach

The move follows an exclusive deal between OSN and HBO in 2022 and its recent acquisition of a majority stake in music platform Anghami.

Published

2 years ago

March 24, 2025

Nour Nasir

warner bros discovery invests in osn streaming to expand mena reach

Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) has acquired a stake in OSN Streaming Limited, a subsidiary of the OSN Group. The investment is part of WBD’s growing commitment to the Middle East and North Africa streaming market. The deal will be finalized in phases, pending regulatory approval.

For OSN, the partnership strengthens its leadership position in the region’s highly competitive streaming landscape. The company has been expanding its content portfolio through long-term partnerships, including an exclusive deal with HBO in 2022. Earlier this year, OSN also acquired a majority stake in music streaming platform Anghami, further diversifying its digital offerings.

Sheikha Dana Naser Sabah Al Ahmad Al Sabah, Group CEO of KIPCO and Chairperson of OSN, highlighted the importance of the partnership:

“We are delighted to be announcing this deal between WBD and OSN, which […] affirms the success of the strategy that KIPCO laid out to focus on and strengthen our streaming business, even in a competitive market environment. The transaction builds on OSN’s strong growth trajectory and market leadership in MENA’s streaming industry, strengthening its competitive position as one of the region’s premier entertainment destinations”.

Jamie Cooke, Executive Vice President & Managing Director for Central Europe, Turkey, and the Middle East at Warner Bros. Discovery, emphasized the importance of local content alongside global hits:

“It’s our goal to tell the greatest stories, whilst innovating our products and distribution channels […] We recognize that alongside enjoying the latest global hits, regional audiences also want stories from and about the region that reflect their own cultures and experiences. Through this deal, we’re delighted to announce that both OSN and Warner Bros. Discovery will invest in high-quality, locally produced content, ensuring a richer and more diverse offering for viewers”.

Also Read: Best Video Streaming Services In The Middle East

OSN Group CEO Joe Kawkabani echoed this sentiment, calling WBD’s investment a major milestone:

“We are thrilled to welcome WBD as a strategic partner. As a global leader in entertainment, WBD brings unparalleled expertise, innovation, and a rich portfolio of iconic brands. This investment is a significant milestone in OSN’s growth journey, reinforcing our dedication to delivering unique and compelling content. It also bolsters our commitment to expanding our investment in local content, broadening its reach beyond MENA to global audiences”.

WBD’s streaming services, Max and Discovery+, now boast nearly 117 million subscribers worldwide. The company’s increasing footprint in MENA is part of a broader expansion strategy that began with the opening of its Dubai office in 2012. Since then, WBD has steadily built its presence in the region, ensuring that MENA audiences have access to world-class entertainment.

News

ESET Bets On Specialized Security AI At 0.5% The Training Cost

ESET says NeoCortex can estimate an attacker’s next move, with a kill switch and human oversight built in to keep it from going rogue.

Published

5 days ago

November 4, 2026

Dana Saadeh

eset bets on specialized security ai at 0.5% the training cost

A sign-in anomaly, a suspicious process launch and an unusual connection may look harmless alone. Together, they can describe an intrusion that is hard for security to teams to piece together.

To solve that problem, ESET announced ESET NeoCortex on November 4, 2026: a specialized foundational AI model for cybersecurity. It powers ESET LiveCortex, available within the ESET PROTECT Platform, which connects fragmented security signals and turns them into actionable incidents.

Filtering is the main selling point, with LiveCortex processing billions of raw telemetry events daily, and just 0.00111% of them contributing to incidents presented to customers. The aim is less alert fatigue and more analyst time spent on threats that matter.

NeoCortex is built on world-model architecture, learning how digital environments behave and how events relate. ESET says that lets it reconstruct missing incident context, recognize similar past cases and estimate an attacker’s likely next step – what the company calls “minus-one-day defense,” a chance to intervene before the next stage unfolds. ESET points to Black October, the week leading up to October 25, 2026, when critical security issues affecting PHP, Linux, GitLab and other key systems demanded rapid, prioritized responses, as the kind of moment where that context matters.

ESET’s internal research also suggests a specialized model like NeoCortex can be trained at up to 200 times lower cost than a large general reasoning model, while delivering more accurate, defense-focused results. The company credits optimized training, a focus on cybersecurity vocabulary, lower computing requirements and privately owned hardware.

Also Read: Dubai Says Its Deepfake Detector Needs Just 7 Seconds Of Video

“AI is accelerating both cyberattacks and cyberdefenses. With ESET NeoCortex, we are applying our AI investment to develop specialized foundational cybersecurity intelligence that remains under our control and strengthens, rather than replaces, human expertise,” said Juraj Malcho, Chief Technology Officer at ESET.

As part of the design, NeoCortex forms part of a layered architecture combining specialized models, deterministic controls, correlation logic, validation, auditability and expert human oversight. Safeguards include restricted sandboxes, read-only tools, continuous monitoring, defined usage and token limits, a kill switch and human oversight of critical response decisions. The model is also developed and self-hosted on ESET’s own infrastructure, which the company says reduces exposure to shifts among third-party AI providers, including commercial and geopolitical ones.