Dr. Manal Rifki

The interesting work sits beneath the surface. Foundation models, the compute powering them, and the tooling that makes AI usable for real businesses. Particular conviction in teams going vertical into finance, media, and operations.

Money still moves badly across most of the world. The MENA, Gulf, and Africa corridor is where the next layer of financial infrastructure gets built, led by operators with regional depth as well as technical edge.

The era of speculation has run its course. What remains is the harder work of custody, settlement, and the institutional plumbing that serious capital actually needs. The unglamorous layers everything else will rely on.

A game has to be good before anything else matters. Economies, identity, and ownership models become interesting only when players want to be there. Studios treating gameplay as the foundation are shaping where digital culture goes next.

Attention is the most contested resource of the next decade. Creator tools, distribution that bypasses old gatekeepers, and IP built for how people actually consume sit at the center of that shift.

Tokenization has moved past theory. Real assets, real liquidity, real institutional appetite. The exchanges, primitives, and rails making digital ownership programmable and investable.