One of Dubai’s largest startup events, North Star 2025, has started on Sunday, with thousands of startups and investors showing up in full force, as per an official press release. Located in Dubai Harbor, the event will run from 12th October to 15th October and is expected to provide networking opportunities for companies looking for prospective funding from investment firms. This is the 10th anniversary of North Star Global.
Gitex Global—the mother event under which multiple gatherings will be held—includes the following events: Fintech Surge, GITEX Impact, Expand North Star, and Future Blockchain Summit.
The debut of one of Dubai’s most significant startup events comes after Dubai ruler Sheik Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum spearheaded the national campaign ‘The Emirates: The Startup Capital Of The World’, an initiative that seeks to develop a startup community comprised of Emiratis with a goal of training and developing 10,000 entrepreneurs.
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Events such as these provide private equity and investment firms an opportunity to invest in late-stage startups as well.
“Our goal is not only to fund European and German funds and late-stage companies, but to make the venture market more accessible – more transparency, more secondary market options, and less bureaucracy,” said KFW Capital CEO Dr Jorg Goschin.
“Here in the UAE, with its appetite for technology and global capital, we see real potential to accelerate co-investment into high-quality European innovation,” he also said.
Ecuador and Chile have both made their debut at North Star Global 2025, with 22 Ecuadorian companies and 12 Chilean companies present as exhibitors.
“We’re proud to showcase more than 22 Ecuadorian companies, including 20 startups, offering solutions from AI-driven banking to advanced medical technologies,” said Ecuadorian ambassador Felipe Ribadeneira.
He also took note of the bold investment approach adopted by Dubai and the UAE to become a global hub in data and artificial intelligence, and said both countries are expecting to sign a memorandum at the World Government Summit that will create a technology logistics corridor.
Among the AI-focused firms, Presight is generating significant buzz with its accelerator program that is looking to provide assistance, expertise, and infrastructure access to tech firms looking to grow in this sector—a program unveiled two weeks after Presight and Shorooq partnered to create a $100 million fund focused on AI ventures.
One crypto analyst with years of experience in the blockchain sector said the only recognizable name he saw in the industry was OKX, while noting a huge amount of young startups trying to find their footing in digital assets.
Exclusive insights from the Managing Director of Fireflies
Vishal Menon, who is the managing director of Gen-Z marketing company Fireflies in Dubai, shared his thoughts in an exclusive exchange with CoinHeadlines after attending North Star on Sunday.
“Big thing is obviously huge focus on AI this year…a lot of startups globally that are coming in that are focused on AI.
“Some of the things that we’ve noticed are a lot of these governments and government authorities from different countries that are bringing their startups,”
“So, one quick example I can give you is Brazil last year brought around 50 startups. This year, they brought 120. So it’s like a huge jump in the number of startups that are coming in, investing in the country, which shows the potential of the UAE and the market, and the fact that a lot of countries want to bring their concepts here, and they see the value in doing business here. Like another example, Korea had a specific section only on blockchain where they had one full pavilion on Korean Blockchain companies. So you see how niche it can be.”
“I’ve seen Gitex mature over all these years, I’ve seen it from 10 years ago, from what it is today, and it’s grown to be something unimaginable.”
He spoke about the diversity of business and ideas at North Star, talking about the sharp range of experiences he had from “meeting a startup in Poland that monitors the health of horses to another AI startup that focuses on mental health in India.”
The Dubai-born entrepreneur said that while North Star was a great event for people to network and get funding, people looking to close sales or anything tangible in business may benefit more by focusing on building relationships instead.
“Personal opinion, from a sales point of view, is that these events are beyond just sales, it’s more of building a relationship… and then you maybe discuss deals later…This is just an icebreaker where people are able to meet, discuss, and build those relationships from the event. “
“I think it’s a great place to get inspired,” he said on a final note.
Fireflies was created in 2017 initially as an edtech startup, before transitioning to digital marketing in 2020.
