You think your skyline has changed? Sure, the buildings are taller and there are more of them, but some of the anchors of years past remain as reminders of the way it used to be.
In Dubai, City Furniture CEO Keith Koenig marveled after riding to the top of the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building. Fifty years ago, the buildings weren’t smaller. They weren’t there.
Dubai had fewer than 100,000 residents when the United Arab Emirates formed in 1971. Today it’s home to more than 3.5 million people who overwhelmingly come from other countries. They’re lured by high-tech jobs in a low- and even no-tax environment, by the city’s high-end retail and restaurant trade and its bright-light nightlife that rivals Miami.
It is all by design.
The UAE has vowed to significantly expand its investments in the United States, in May promising President Donald Trump $1.4 trillion in projects over the next decade.
The UAE has prospered, Koenig says, “not just because of oil money, but because it has a strategic plan that (its) leadership … thoughtfully put together and managed over decades. It took enormous vision to get that done.”
The Burj Khalifa might be the most conspicuous example of that vision. To reach the elevators to the 148th floor observation deck, you walk through the Dubai Mall, where you can shop for jewelry at Bulgari and Cartier, buy a new outfit at Balenciaga, shoes at Christian Louboutin, enjoy a fine meal at La Maison Ani or just grab a burger at Five Guys.
Koenig, who also is chairman of the Florida Chamber of Commerce, was part of a 12-member Chamber delegation that spent a week in the UAE in April. The group toured startup hubs and cultural assets, met with counterparts at chambers of commerce in Dubai and Abu Dhabi and heard how artificial intelligence was swiftly being embraced throughout government and the private sector.
The Chamber invited Florida Trend to be among the dozen people in the delegation and helped cover some of the costs for the trip. Most of the tours and briefings focused on tech innovations — from a national emphasis on artificial intelligence to tech innovations in health care and clean energy and the country’s focus on diversifying its economy to minimize reliance on oil revenue.
“They are a welcoming and tolerant society that wants to embrace diversity,” Koenig says. “I found that really wonderful. And I can see that they want to build their economy on more than just oil. They want to build their economy on technology, on tourism.”
Though it is oil-rich, the UAE embraces renewable energy sources in part because it knows its reserves are finite and in part because its interest in AI and tech requires ways to keep its data centers operating coolly. In Abu Dhabi, for example, Masdar City is an experimental community that hopes to run solely on renewable energy, where the only cars are electric, and where buildings are designed to provide shade and create breezeways to help people endure summer heat that can exceed 120 degrees Fahrenheit.
The UAE has vowed to significantly expand its investments in the United States. In May, UAE’s national security adviser promised President Trump $1.4 trillion in projects over the next decade. The most specific plan includes building the largest AI campus outside the United States covering 10 square miles in the UAE that will be managed by American companies and utilize advanced, U.S.-made AI chips.
It is unclear whether that figure also includes $20 billion in U.S. data centers pledged by Emirati billionaire developer Hussain Sajwani during a January visit with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. Sajwani’s development company, DAMAC Properties, is building its first Florida project, The Delmore, on the Surfside site of the collapsed Champlain Towers. It will provide 37 “mansions in the sky” starting at $15 million per unit. His daughter Amira Sajwani hosted the Chamber delegation for dinner at his home on Dubai’s famed Palm Jumeirah island.
HUMILITY AND RESPECT
Chamber COO and CFO Katie Yeutter led the delegation, going into the trip looking for ideas that could help the Chamber advance its “2030 Blueprint,” a 2018 document that maps out steps needed to make Florida’s economy the world’s 10th largest by 2030. Florida’s $1.74-billion GDP is the fourth largest of any U.S. state and 16th highest in the world. Climbing higher in those ranks will require “best practice sharing” around AI, health care and smart cities, Yeutter believes.
Technology can disrupt everything from business models to long-term plans. The 2030 Blueprint was issued in September 2018. It mentions artificial intelligence just once, in a bullet point about efficient communications systems. Now AI is emerging as a priority for the Chamber to help achieve the blueprint’s goals, including improving educational outputs, diversifying the state’s economy and improving the quality of life.
“It used to be ‘the big fish eats the small fish,’” Yeutter says, repeating an expression heard on the trip. “Now it’s ‘the fast fish eats the slow fish.’”
It’s a mindset that informs the UAE’s own long-term goals, including its “We Are the UAE 2031” plan, which like the Chamber’s 2030 Blueprint, aims to grow and diversify its economy, enhance quality of life and increase its influence globally.
The Chamber would like Florida to be a part of that, believing it can help facilitate mutually beneficial partnerships and investments. On the first day of the tour, Yeutter signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Abu Dhabi Chamber of Commerce, formalizing a strategic partnership with the Florida Chamber to expand trade, investment and long-term economic collaboration between Florida and the United Arab Emirates.
“This agreement represents a significant step in positioning Florida as a global hub for trade and innovation,” Yeutter said at the time.
Shortly after returning home, the Chamber was invited to send a second delegation next February to attend the annual World Governments Summit in Dubai and host a panel on Florida’s economy. That’s a big step toward building on the relationships established in April and forging new ones. And it’s more than Yeutter hoped for.
“We didn’t have set expectations” going in, she says. “Anytime you go into a new conversation with a fixed expectation … you sort of close your mind to a lot of learning and a lot of things that you may not have noticed.”
Coming into the country “just to learn with humility and respect” helped make the trip a success, says Matt Higgins, who founded RSE Ventures with billionaire developer Stephen Ross. Higgins has investments in the UAE and enjoys a bit of a celebrity profile after being on Shark Tank Dubai. He was the one who suggested the trip and helped open doors for the Chamber delegation.
“From a cultural standpoint, sometimes Americans have a reputation for being very transactional,” Higgins says. “We want to show up once and get a deal done. That is not well received in the UAE. It is, at the end of the day, still about relationships and trust. And nothing exhibits trust and develops relationships more than coming with pure intellectual curiosity and without a concrete transactional objective.”
Masdar City represents the UAE’s drive to diversify its economy and plan for the future. It has clusters focused on life sciences, artificial intelligence, space and renewable energy. The Florida Chamber delegation hopes to learn about what works, what doesn’t and bring best practices ideas back home.
Higgins calls the UAE a “test bed for innovation,” noting it stands to be the first country where commercial EVTOLs, or air taxis, operate starting next year. Florida hopes to be one of the first U.S. states with air taxi travel.
The Dubai Future Foundation, working with Emirates Air, has launched an experimental system allowing passengers to check their luggage and undergo security screening at mini terminals, which are basically airline offices throughout Dubai, and be transported directly to their terminals in hopes of easing long lines at the airport.
“They’ve managed to create a culture that is just very open to trying things before they are adopted elsewhere,” Higgins says.
It’s a sentiment that Dubai Future Foundation chief of transformation and partnerships Alia Al Mur expressed when she briefed the Chamber delegation: “Whatever we do here is not just for us. It’s for the rest of the world.”
AI PUSH
AI, Yeutter says, is “a fundamental technology that will touch every aspect of life in one way or another.”
Learning about the UAE’s AI emphasis seems to have accelerated a Chamber initiative to better equip Florida businesses to understand and use the emerging technology.
“We’re talking about going very big,” Yeutter says. “Something substantive and fundamental for the state of Florida modeled after best practices that we learned in the UAE.”
The UAE developed an “AI Academy” to train government workers, and each agency has an AI manager, Al Mur told the delegation. That model might be something Florida businesses can learn from.
“There’s so much unknown with AI. There’s a lot of information out there, it’s all over the place,” Yeutter says. “How do we help be the convener of all of that information on best practices policy development in a very concerted way for the private sector?”
She hopes to work with state education leaders to create a Florida-version of an AI institute, developing a system to make clear what is needed to help businesses and industries employ the technology effectively and set up educational programs to teach them how.
An AI-readiness index could identify those needs, says Anil Menon, dean of Rollins College’s Crummer Graduate School of Business. Crummer’s Center for AI-EDGE (Executive Decision Making, Governance, and Execution) can help design it, says Menon, a former managing board member of the World Economic Forum who previously held top positions with IBM and Cisco.
Too many executives still don’t understand AI and its potential, he says. “A lot of what you’re hearing and seeing about AI is not AI. It is the old analytics labeled as AI from a marketing point of view.”
Used properly, the readiness index could help Florida use AI to develop what Menon calls “self-sustaining innovation clusters” where business, academia and government bring together the resources necessary for industries to take root. Those clusters, in turn, serve as a magnet for businesses that would be far more powerful and enduring than relying on tax incentives.
Being a quasi-monarchy, the UAE can set national priorities that can clear the way for such clusters. It’s not so simple in the United States, but Chamber officials believe they can serve as facilitators. “I don’t see any other organization filling that role,” says Koenig.
At a minimum, Yeutter hopes to build on the relationships the Chamber established during the trip and continue to look at the UAE for ideas and lessons.
“They make very fast decisions. They let people make mistakes, and they pay their talent very well. … There’s fundamentally a mindset shift that we can learn from.”
Friends to Everyone
In one of its first meetings in the United Arab Emirates, the Florida Chamber of Commerce delegation heard an Abu Dhabi counterpart succinctly define his country’s attitude: “We are friends to everyone,” said Abu Dhabi Chamber Director of Investor Relations Yaser Al Yousuf. “For us, business is business.”
It sounds like a cheap bromide, but this is a country with a minister of tolerance and a minister of happiness. In Abu Dhabi, the Abrahamic Family House is dedicated to “peaceful coexistence, inclusivity, and the centrality of human fraternity” and is home to a mosque, a church and a synagogue.
Though Iran sits about 35 miles across the Strait of Hormuz, the UAE was an original signatory to the 2020 Abraham Accords, establishing “peace, diplomatic relations and full normalization of bilateral ties” between the Muslim nation and Israel.
Since its foundation in 1971, UAE leaders have emphasized planning for the future, recognizing that oil revenue is both concentrated in Abu Dhabi and finite, choosing to invest much of that money into diversifying the economy.
In 2022, 72.4% of its GDP came from non-oil sources, led by tourism, development and technology.
A big part of that transformation is rooted in a recognition that outside help is needed. While more than 11 million people live in the UAE, only about 10% are native Emiratis. The rest are ex-pats from 200 countries, lured by a no-income tax state brimming with construction projects and venture capital funding an emerging tech sector.
“Whether you want to grow or start a business, find new partners and markets, or be on the cutting edge to meet the demands of tomorrow, it’s all here in the UAE,” the UAE’s U.S. embassy website says.
Native Emiratis enjoy benefits for living as a minority in their own country, including free education and health care. And the country’s investment in biotech includes a genomic mapping project that seeks DNA samples from all 1 million citizens. About 800,000 people had participated as of early April, Paul Jones, the CEO of Abu Dhabibased Omics Centre of Excellence spearheading the program, told the delegation during a tour of his lab.
“There’s no other example I’ve seen anywhere in the world where the whole of the local population gets sequenced,” he said. From a macro level, the resulting data can help medical systems identify disease risks and prepare for future health challenges. For individuals, it can foster the ultimate precision medicine when people consent to having their own tests analyzed for signs of impending health challenges. Artificial intelligence can help develop specialized treatments.
“AI is woven into everything we try to do,” Jones said.
Why Go?
After delivering the keynote speech at the Florida Chamber of Commerce’s 2023 leadership summit, author and entrepreneur Matt Higgins met with the Chamber’s board of directors.
Higgins had worked as vice chairman of the Miami Dolphins and was a New York Jets executive vice president before that. He cofounded RSE Ventures with billionaire developer and Dolphins owner Stephen Ross. And he was promoting his book, Burn the Boats, his rags-to-riches story which he says is a result of rejecting any kind of Plan B in life. That back-up plan can keep you from fully committing to your plan, he writes, and that’s where failure lies.
He had talked to the Chamber about innovation and the universal disruption that artificial intelligence stands to generate. What would you do, Higgins was asked by a board member, if you were us?
“I would go to Abu Dhabi and the UAE.”
Florida and the UAE are high-growth, low-tax and low-regulation environments with significant real estate development industries. Higgins saw a first mover advantage for the Chamber if it was able to establish relationships with the Emirates’ government and business leaders. At a minimum, those relationships open the door to “very granular insights” into UAE innovations, “what goes right, what goes wrong — and it just saves time when you’re trying to implement these bold ambitions if you could have a live case study and get access to that raw data,” Higgins says.
Despite a suffocating desert heat — it hit nearly 123 degrees Fahrenheit in Abu Dhabi one day in late May — the UAE has managed to find ways to keep data centers sufficiently cool without interfering with the oil-rich nation’s goal of securing half its power supply from clean energy by 2050.
It is home of the world’s largest single-site solar park about 50 km outside Dubai, with nearly 800,000 panels that are cleaned for sand buildup by robots. Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park also houses the world’s tallest solar tower rising 850 feet.
There are “surprising similarities” between Florida and the UAE in climate and lifestyle, says Florida Chamber Board Chairman Keith Koenig. Both the Chamber and the UAE have blueprints for their future economies and societal well-being. Both have tremendously diverse populations and an entrepreneurial spirit. “Miami,” Koenig told an official with the Dubai Chamber of Commerce, “is the city of the future in the United States.”
Continued Collaboration
A group of Florida CEOs will be in Dubai in February for the United Arab Emirates’ annual World Governments Summit.
The annual summit showcases “the UAE’s unwavering commitment to fostering global partnerships, exchanging invaluable expertise and pioneering innovative business models that will shape a more promising future for humanity.” This year’s gathering included 30 heads of state, CEOs from Google and IBM and dozens of government delegations and a video speech from Elon Musk.
For 2026, “they’re very excited to bring a group of Florida CEOs over to the World Governments Summit and actually do a program on Florida,” says Florida Chamber of Commerce COO Katie Yeutter. The invitation grew out of a lunch meeting with UAE Minister of Artificial Intelligence Omar Al Olama, who also serves as summit vice chair, and Summit Deputy Managing Director Mohamed Al Sharhan.
Yeutter is preparing a list of 15-20 “good voices and storytellers about Florida and what we’re doing and where we’re going.” In addition, the Chamber hopes to host UAE representatives at its Oct. 28 Future of Florida Forum in Orlando, perhaps taking them around the state to showcase investment opportunities.