Happy Thursday everyone!

Dubai's week captured a city bouncing back in more ways than one. A damaged billboard on a quiet roadside became an unlikely canvas, as marketers turned a torn sign into a viral showcase of Gulf creativity. Meanwhile, the region's tech backbone showed cracks of its own: AWS confirmed it cannot fully restore cloud infrastructure in Bahrain and the UAE after damage sustained during the Iran war, raising fresh questions about resilience in the Gulf's booming digital economy. Yet even as challenges linger, tourism is roaring back — Dubai logged its busiest August visitor numbers since February, signaling confidence is returning fast.

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Markets

Dubai Pushes To Lift Travel Warnings As Tourism Rebounds

What Happened

“We’re trying to remove Dubai and the UAE from the travel advisories,” Issam Kazim, CEO of the Dubai Corporation for Tourism and Commerce Marketing, told Bloomberg. He said the UAE is working with other countries to remove the warnings, which could help ease insurance challenges and encourage international airlines to return. The comments come as Dubai’s tourism sector continues to recover from the Iran war.

Why It Matters

Dubai recorded 869,000 international overnight visitors in August, the highest since February. Hotel occupancy reached 66%, compared with just 36% in March. Kazim said lifting travel warnings could help airlines secure insurance and resume more services to the UAE.

What's Next

Dubai is working to bring back more international carriers as regional aviation gradually recovers. Airlines have faced higher operating and insurance costs during the conflict, while Dubai has also relied on local residents, incentives and visitor programs to support tourism demand

AWS Can't Fully Recover Bahrain, UAE Cloud Zones After Iran War Damage

What Happened

AWS says it cannot restore its Bahrain cloud facility or one UAE data zone (mec1-az2), damaged during the Iran war. Strikes on Iran in March triggered retaliatory missile and drone attacks on Israel and Gulf states, directly hitting two UAE facilities and damaging a Bahrain site.

Why It Matters

The strikes disrupted regional banking operations tied to AWS outages earlier this year. The episode exposes how vulnerable the Gulf's booming cloud and AI infrastructure is to regional conflict, pushing the UAE to reconsider a major AI data-center project—including underground, blast-resistant, and more dispersed facility designs.

What's Next

AWS says it has exhausted recovery options for unmigrated Bahrain data and is helping customers shift operations elsewhere. It's working to replace damaged UAE infrastructure, with updates expected in coming months and a further Bahrain update due in early 2027. AWS says it remains in contact with local authorities.

Dubai's Damaged Billboard Becomes a Marketer's Playground

When Lewis Davey, founder of IDEA FARM, spotted a torn, unused billboard on a busy Dubai roadside, he didn't see wreckage — he saw opportunity. Posting the image to LinkedIn with an open call for "Dubai brands to come at me," he sparked one of the platform's more entertaining creative jams in recent memory.

Within a day, marketers and creatives responded with their own spec concepts, mocking up the billboard as if real brands had claimed the space. Someone put White Stripes Tailors & Shirtmakers into the frame, turning the rip into a tape measure mid-fitting with the line "It's not the wall that's wrong. It's the fit." Someone else slotted in Samsung, reworking the tear into a shattered screen under the tagline "time for a better screen."

Someone brought in GymNation, stretching the damage into the words "get ripped." Someone else used FIX Dessert Chocolatier, framing the tear as a bite mark with "someone couldn't wait." Someone put Emirates into the mix, joking the hole was punched by a passing jet, "not the billboard." And someone else compared the whole thing to a Lucio Fontana slash hanging in the Tate Modern.

None of these were official campaigns, just LinkedIn's creative crowd showing its speed and wit, turning a broken sign into a shared canvas.

👨‍💻From Smashi Business’ Desk

• Dubai based The Giving Movement CEO Rania Masri El Khatib has spoken out after Macklemore was removed from Ed Sheeran’s US tour following his support for Palestine.

• The Glazer family, Manchester United's majority owners, are reportedly among the parties circling a potential takeover of Saudi giants Al-Ittihad.

• A reported five-man consortium lead by Cristiano Ronaldo is pushing a joint bid to buy Al-Nassr from PIF, with a $100M minimum buy-in per partner.

• The Israeli Air Force has used Apple’s newly unveiled iPhone Duo in an Instagram post featuring Israeli soldiers in Gaza, with the images displayed across the foldable phone under the headline “This is Duo”

🔍In other news…

• OpenAI targets $1.2 trillion valuation in new investor funding round

• Iran war cost hits $38 billion, forecast to rise $3 billion a month, CBO says

• Trump administration plans $2.8 billion munitions sale to Israel, sources say

• Lebanese Carlos Ghosn, the former Nissan Motor Co. chief executive officer, is on trial in Paris

• Saudi Arabia has ‘paused Red Sea oil exports’

🦄 World of Startups

• Saudi Arabian building materials platform BRKZ has secured $31 million in new funding

• Saudi digital payments company Barq has raised $329.5 million in a Series A round, valuing the fintech at $1.85 billion.

• ChatFeatured, Canada-based AI startup, raised $2M in a pre-seed funding round from BY Venture Partners (UAE/Lebanon) and other global investors

• Doctorbook, Syria-based healthtech platform, raised $16K in a pre-seed funding round from a group of angel investors, valuing the startup at $200K

• Carbar, Australia-based car subscription platform, is merging with Carasti, UAE-based car subscription business operating across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, and Singapore, at a combined pre-raise valuation of $74M

• Fincart, Egypt-based eCommerce enablement platform, raised $2.8M in a seed funding round

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