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First Tech Group's research, founder stories, and field notes on building and operating the digital economy's core infrastructure.
NewReading the 2026 AI Index: the numbers, and the Gulf surprise
Stanford's 2026 AI Index counts $344.7B of private AI investment and the fastest adoption curve on record — with the UAE at 64% population adoption, ahead of the United States. What the data actually says, and what it means for builders here.
NewThe Arabic AI gap: why models fail 400 million speakers
Four hundred million people speak Arabic; the machines were barely taught from it. The structural reasons models fail — diglossia, morphology, tokenization — and how the region is closing the gap at home.
NewReading the 2026 AI Index: the numbers, and the Gulf surprise
Stanford's 2026 AI Index counts $344.7B of private AI investment and the fastest adoption curve on record — with the UAE at 64% population adoption, ahead of the United States. What the data actually says, and what it means for builders here.
NewThe Arabic AI gap: why models fail 400 million speakers
Four hundred million people speak Arabic; the machines were barely taught from it. The structural reasons models fail — diglossia, morphology, tokenization — and how the region is closing the gap at home.
NewSovereign AI, decoded: the real economics and dependencies
Every nation wants sovereign AI, then builds it on foreign chips under foreign licenses. An honest map of the sovereignty you can actually own — and the parts that are, for now, out of anyone's hands.
NewThe $340 billion question: where gen-AI value in banking actually lands
McKinsey sizes generative AI in banking at up to $340B a year; the card networks are piloting agent-initiated payments. The value gets captured by whoever engineers the trust in between — the wallet, the delegation, the venue.
NewContext is the moat: why AI memory beats model size
Bigger context windows don't fix memory — a growing pile of research shows they can make it worse. Why durable, structured memory, not parameter count, is the real frontier of useful AI.
NewWhat the supervisors actually found: AI in finance, per the FSB, BIS, BoE, and IMF
Half the banking industry has deployed AI; 2% trusts it to act alone. Inside the supervisory studies — and why their risk catalogue reads less like a warning and more like a build specification.
NewThe agent economy: what changes when software can spend
AI can plan a purchase and then stall at the checkout, because every payment rail ever built assumes a human tapping 'confirm.' The unsolved problem of machines that can pay — and the wallet-shaped answer.
NewState of the Digital-Asset Stack — 2026
Our inaugural annual benchmark: where liquidity, custody, and on-chain settlement are actually consolidating — and the index we'll track every year.
NewMarkets · Money · Intelligence: why we own the stack
Three companies, one identity and memory backbone, a compounding loop between them. The thesis behind funding, building, and operating as one system.
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Research, founder stories, and field notes from First Tech Group. No noise.