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In today’s newsletter:

Discover the latest stories from Arabian Business, in case you missed them on Monday:

Dubai ranked as the world’s top destination for Greenfield Foreign Direct Investment projects in 2024, attracting AED52.3bn ($14.24bn) in estimated FDI capital, a 33.2 percent increase from 2023. The emirate recorded 1,117 Greenfield FDI projects, the highest since 2020.

On the real estate front, Dubai’s office market saw a 9.1 percent increase in average lease rates in the second half of 2024, according to Knight Frank. The Trade Center District recorded the highest rental growth at 96 percent. Rising demand has led to a shortage of prime office space city-wide, Faisal Durrani, Partner – Head of Research, MENA said.

In other news, female entrepreneurs in the UAE are confident about future growth and are turning to AI to scale their businesses, according to a GoDaddy survey. Emirati women are leading households financially and adopting AI to enhance operations in their small businesses.

Meanwhile in Saudi Arabia, the kingdom's Public Investment Fund (PIF) launched Al Waha Duty-Free Company, the first Saudi-owned duty-free operator. The company will develop luxury retail outlets across the country and offer a range of products, including high-quality Saudi goods.

Aside from this, Chinese startup Monica introduced Manus, a general AI agent designed to analyse, plan, and execute complex tasks. Launched on March 06, 2025, Manus is claimed to outperform OpenAI’s DeepResearch on the GAIA benchmark and can interact with the internet in real time.

^{Until next time, Sharon Benjamin for Arabian Business}

THE LONGER READ:

The race to achieve ‘glass skin’ with emerging trends such as double cleansing, snail mucus, salmon sperm products and more is taking over the internet – but is this all just a passing trend?

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