Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), the Middle East, Africa and South Asia (MEASA) region’s financial center, announced the launch of a venture studio platform exclusively dedicated to ubiquitous finance and digital asset technologies.

The platform – Studio Launchpad  – developed in partnership with Dubai-based venture studio Enhance Ventures and innovation advisory group Silicon Foundry will attract and engage a leading start-up and corporate venture studios consortium.

With this initiative, Dubai aims to cement its position as a leading hub for venture building in MEASA and join cities like San Francisco, New York, Berlin and Paris.

Over the next five years, approximately 20 studios are projected to launch in the DIFC. Collectively the studios will launch over 200 new ventures, of which over 100 will be scale-ups, and ten will gain unicorn status.

Together they aim to create over 8,000 jobs in Dubai’s innovation sector and attract over $544.5 million (AED 2 billion) in venture capital.

“Launching the first global Venture Studio Launchpad is a core pillar of our vision to put DIFC at the center of the digital transformation of the financial sector in the UAE and globally, reflecting the vision of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. We see great potential to leverage the venture studio model to accelerate the creation of scale-ups and unicorns from Dubai that will contribute over-proportionally to new job creation and economic development”, said Essa Kazim, Governor of DIFC.

“DIFC is building an ecosystem from the ground up that will support studios and founders with everything they need to be successful and reimagine virtually every aspect of the financial services value chain to help realize Dubai’s ambitions for the digital era,” he added. 

CONSTRUCTION OF THE NEW FACILITY