The New Financial Stack: How AI, Web3 and Digital Assets Are Changing Finance

By Vishal Parmar, Founder & CEO of VAP Group

1.    MENA is rapidly emerging as a global hub for AI, blockchain, digital assets, and fintech. What makes the region particularly significant, and where do you see its biggest opportunities over the next 3–5 years?

V.P.: MENA is continuously evolving into a region where technology, capital, and infrastructure are being built together. The region’s combination of long-term investment, digital infrastructure, regulatory development, and access to global markets creates a strong environment for innovation to scale.

Over the next three to five years, I see significant opportunities around sovereign and enterprise AI, AI infrastructure, tokenization, digital financial infrastructure, cybersecurity, fintech, and intelligent public services. The bigger opportunity isn’t in individual technologies, but in how they build connected, efficient, and resilient digital economies together.

2.    Having built and delivered major technology events across the region, what key shifts have you observed among businesses, investors and governments in the way they are approaching AI, Web3 and emerging technologies?

V.P.: In the UAE, AI is increasingly being approached alongside infrastructure, cybersecurity, government services, enterprise transformation and investment, while blockchain and digital assets are moving into more institutional conversations around tokenization, financial infrastructure and regulated markets. The UAE’s growing financial ecosystem reflects this broader shift, with increasing participation from global asset managers, technology companies and digital-asset firms.

From our vantage point, having brought together governments, investors, enterprises, founders and technology leaders across the region, that change is very visible in the room.  Businesses and investors across the region are shifting more towards practical outcomes: technology that improves productivity, creates new financial rails, strengthens infrastructure, or opens new markets. That is where I believe MENA is increasingly moving from being a market that adopts emerging technology to becoming a place where global capital, technology and talent can come together to build, test and scale what comes next.

3.    From AI and blockchain to gaming and digital assets, what are the most important conversations you believe the industry needs to have today, and how are your upcoming events creating a platform for those conversations?

V.P.: The industry needs to shift its focus from what these emerging technologies can do in theory to how we actually deploy them responsibly, securely, and at scale. We have entered a stage where AI infrastructure, blockchain tokenization, and digital gaming economies are no longer operating in silos; they are converging to reshape global financial systems and consumer markets. Addressing these interlinked sectors requires moving past surface-level hype and tackling the real-world regulatory, operational, and capital challenges that determine whether these technologies can achieve mainstream integration particularly across high-growth markets like the Middle East.

Building on the momentum of our previous editions in Abu Dhabi and Riyadh, which brought together global speakers, and key representatives from ministries and global tech enterprises. Our upcoming events are designed as action-oriented platforms. We don’t just host panel discussions; we bring policymakers, enterprise leaders, institutional investors, and founders into the same room to solve specific execution hurdles. By giving these sectors a unified ecosystem, we aim to drive direct investment, advance regional tech mandates like Saudi Vision 2030 and Abu Dhabi’s digital growth plans, and turn high-level conversations into concrete commercial partnerships. Ultimately, the objective is to create a meeting point between technology, capital and execution. That is where we believe the most meaningful opportunities are emerging.

4.    What can attendees expect from the upcoming Global AI Show, Global Blockchain Show, Global Games Show and Global Trading Show in Abu Dhabi, and what makes this edition particularly significant for the region?

V.P.: VAP Group is proud to present an exciting series of major technology and investment platforms in Abu Dhabi over the coming months, covering AI, blockchain, digital assets, trading, gaming, and Web3. What makes it particularly significant is the scale and diversity of the communities coming together and the opportunity to connect them around the technologies and markets shaping the next phase of the digital economy.

Earlier this year, we brought the Global AI Show, Global Blockchain Show and Global Games Show together in Riyadh on 29–30 June. In Abu Dhabi, we are building on that experience with a more focused approach by giving each ecosystem its own platform. We expect this to create opportunities for the right investors, enterprises, founders and industry leaders to connect across them.

The Global AI Show Abu Dhabi on 18–19 November will focus on sovereign and agentic AI, AI infrastructure, governance, cybersecurity and enterprise transformation. The Global Blockchain Show Abu Dhabi, on 10–11 December, will focus on institutional blockchain adoption, tokenization, digital assets and the infrastructure supporting the next phase of Web3.

Co-located with it, the inaugural Global Trading Show brings a cross-asset perspective to the ecosystem, connecting traders, investors, institutions, brokers, exchanges and financial technology players across seven asset classes, alongside institutional forums, AI & Quant and Web3 & DeFi zones and a live trading tournament. The Global Games Show Abu Dhabi in January 2027 will bring together visionaries across gaming, esports, and immersive technologies, with a strong focus on AI-driven development, investment and cross-border expansion. All four events are expected to draw thousands of global leaders together.

The objective across all four is consistent: bring the right decision-makers into the room and create an environment where conversations can move from ideas to partnerships, investment and execution. Abu Dhabi gives us the opportunity to build focused platforms for each ecosystem while also reflecting how closely these industries are becoming connected.

5.    AI, Web3 and financial technology are increasingly converging. From a business and investment perspective, which developments do you believe could create the most meaningful opportunities in the coming years?

V.P.: The strongest opportunities will emerge where technology solves a real economic or infrastructure challenge. AI-powered financial services, tokenised real-world assets, stablecoin and payment infrastructure, intelligent risk and compliance systems, AI-native enterprises and blockchain-based settlement are areas worth watching closely. We are also seeing the boundaries between AI, digital assets and financial markets becoming less distinct. That convergence can create entirely new business models, but it will require strong infrastructure, appropriate governance and a clear focus on utility.

For VAP Group, this thinking also extends beyond events. We launched VAP Ventures in Riyadh in June as our dedicated investment arm, with a goal of backing 100 startups by 2030 across AI, Web3, blockchain and gaming. It represents our evolution from simply creating platforms for founders to also supporting the companies building the next generation of technology.

6.    Looking ahead, what do you hope businesses, investors and technology leaders take away from these events, and what role do you see VAP Group playing in shaping the next phase of this ecosystem?

V.P.: I hope people leave with fewer abstract predictions and more practical opportunities, new partnerships, investment conversations, market insights, and a clearer understanding of where technology is actually creating value.

Our role at VAP Group is to build the platforms where those connections can happen. We want to connect capital with innovation, enterprises with emerging technology, and global founders with the markets and ecosystems where they can scale.

The next phase of the technology economy will be defined less by individual technologies and more by how effectively they work together. Our ambition is to remain a global connector in that process, building platforms, supporting founders through VAP Ventures, and creating ecosystems where the next generation of technology companies can grow.