Dubai to ramp up metaverse efforts with 40,000 new jobs

One of the leading crypto hubs in the Middle East, the emirate of Dubai, launches the Dubai Metaverse Strategy that aims to turn it into one of the world’s top 10 metaverse economies. The strategy promotes Dubai’s ambitions to support more than 40,000 virtual jobs by 2030.

On July 18, the Emirates News Agency reported about the launch of the Dubai Metaverse Strategy by Vice President, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, H.H. Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum.

Al Maktoum hopes to transform the emirate into a global tech capital, focusing primarily on artificial intelligence (AI) and Web3. Dubai Metaverse Strategy goes in line with the objectives of the United Arab Emirates AI Strategy to enhance the nation’s status as one of the world’s leading countries in futuristic sectors by investing in new technologies.

The Dubai Metaverse Strategy will include research and development (R&D) collaborations to enhance the metaverse’s economic contributions, utilizing accelerators and incubators to attract companies and projects from abroad, and providing support in metaverse education aimed at developers, content creators and users of digital platforms in the metaverse community.

New governmental work models in tourism, education, retail, remote work, healthcare, and the legal sector are promised to be created within the Strategy’s framework. Its key pillars are said to be extended reality, augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), mixed reality and digital twins — a virtual representation of an object or system.

The Strategy suggests promoting the full deployment of 5G networks to enable edge computing, which would allow data to be collected, stored, and processed locally via smart devices and local networks instead of the cloud.

According to the release, VR and AR have created 6,700 jobs and contributed $500 million to the UAE’s economy. Globally, the value of venture capital and private equity financing in the metaverse reached $13 billion in 2021, while real estate sales in the metaverse surpassed $500 million last year.

Since the beginning of June, the Dubai Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) issued or extended the virtual assets licenses for several key crypto platforms, such as Crypto.com, Huobi and OKX.