As AI rapidly redraws the boundaries of global education, the UAE continues to position itself at the epicentre of this technological shift. Ankabut, the UAE’s National Research and Education Network (NREN), leads this digital transformation.
Originally established as Khalifa University’s technology arm, Ankabut has evolved under CEO Tarek Jundi from an infrastructure provider into a pioneering edtech ecosystem enabler. Drawing on over 25 years of industry experience across Cisco, Intel, and successful enterprise startups, Jundi is steering Ankabut through an ambitious strategy focused on AI smart campuses, unified data frameworks, and agentic service delivery.
In this exclusive Q&A for AI Times, Jundi explores why AI is permanently dismantling the traditional “one-size-fits-all” learning model, how institutions should architect their AI strategies from the ground up, and why human judgment must remain the unshakeable foundation of modern education.
Could you tell us about your professional background and what led you to lead Ankabut?
My career spans over 25 years in technology, operations management, media, and telecommunications. I spent a significant portion of my career managing regional operations for multinational technology giants like Cisco and Intel, while also building tech startups. Over a decade ago, I launched an enterprise startup that collaborated with Huawei to build their enterprise go-to-market landscape both regionally and globally.
Later, I founded an edutainment startup called MindMovers, which functioned like a MasterClass platform for iconic Arabic instructors. Its core mission was to promote lifelong learning, based on the principle that education should never stop regardless of an individual’s age, skill set, or career stage.
Transitioning to Ankabut was a natural progression that offered national-scale impact. While MindMovers targeted specific market segments, Ankabut provided a platform to fundamentally transform the educational technology landscape across the UAE and the wider region.
How has Ankabut evolved from its original mandate into its current role?
Ankabut originated within academia as the technology arm of Khalifa University before evolving into the UAE’s National Research and Education Network (NREN), the national equivalent of Internet2 in the United States or GÉANT in Europe.
We deliver ultra-high-speed connectivity, sovereign in-country data centres, colocation, and SaaS educational tools like Learning Management Systems and Student Information Systems for academic institutions nationwide.
When I joined, our strategic imperative was to transition Ankabut from a pure infrastructure operator into an ecosystem enabler, shifting our value creation up to the application layer across three core pillars.
First, we are constructing AI Smart Campus Infrastructure with partners like Siemens to bridge physical utilities, IoT devices, and digital environments into a single operating system. Second, we are establishing Unified Data Frameworks, because AI cannot function effectively on fragmented data silos.
Third, we are delivering Personalised Experiences and Agentic AI, replacing disconnected applications with single-persona platforms and transforming administrative service catalogues using conversational AI agents. Our five-year roadmap focuses on consolidating our regional leadership before scaling our sector-agnostic platforms horizontally into fields like healthcare.
How is AI fundamentally transforming education, and why is the UAE well-positioned for this shift?
AI represents a fundamental shift in how education is defined, delivered, and accessed. Most importantly, it eliminates the illusion of “one-size-fits-all” education. Every student possesses a distinct learning pace, IQ, and skill gap. AI enables truly personalised learning journeys tailored to individual needs rather than treating an entire classroom identically.
Furthermore, AI accelerates the transition from Education 1.0, which relied strictly on static degrees and institutional prestige, towards Education 2.0 and continuous, lifelong learning. Career trajectories no longer rely on a single degree earned in one’s early twenties; professionals must continuously upskill throughout their working lives.
The UAE is exceptionally well-positioned to lead this transformation due to its national AI strategy, heavy investment in sovereign compute infrastructure, and proactive curriculum reforms.
How should educational institutions approach building an effective AI strategy?
Institutions must realise that AI is an enabler, not a standalone strategy. Applying AI to fragmented, legacy systems simply results in “garbage in, garbage out.” Institutions need to return to the drawing board and rethink their entire value chain, from administrative operations and decision-making to learning delivery.
Architecturally, AI must be built from the foundation up rather than applied as a superficial top layer. It begins with foundational infrastructure, including high-speed connectivity, sovereign cloud environments, and robust compute power.
Next comes data governance to ensure information is properly structured and secured before running analytics. Ultimately, AI should function as the institution’s core operating system rather than an extra layer of software that adds unnecessary complexity.
How do you address AI security and ensure human oversight remains intact?
Governance and security cannot be an afterthought or a final checkpoint at the end of development; they must be engineered into the infrastructure from day one. In today’s rapidly moving environment, annual security reviews are obsolete.
Governance frameworks must be dynamic and continuously updated. At Ankabut, we treat data as a sovereign product governed by localised privacy rules and strict classification frameworks.
Equally important is building a human in the loop into our AI models as a fundamental condition for accountability. While AI can automate complex workflows and analyse vast data sets, human judgment must remain supreme. Whether an educator is evaluating a student or an administrator is approving an operational request, AI serves purely as a partner. The final decision must always rest with human expertise.
How do we balance teaching technical AI skills with preserving human critical thinking?
World Economic Forum data shows that as machines become more intelligent, human-centric capabilities become far more valuable. With roughly 60% of today’s technical AI skills expected to evolve by 2030, soft skills like critical thinking, leadership, and emotional intelligence will be the true differentiators.
Since LLMs can answer almost any prompt instantly, the focus in classrooms must shift from merely retrieving answers to asking the right questions, challenging AI outputs, and exercising reasoning. For educators, AI offloads heavy administrative tasks like routine marking and reporting, giving teachers time back to mentor students. Students rarely remember worksheets; they remember the educators who believed in them. AI provides the time required to nurture those essential human relationships.
What is your advice to educational leaders and those hesitant to adopt AI?
My core advice to institutions looking ahead is to start with your infrastructure and data, embed human judgment into every process, and establish dynamic governance from the outset.
To those hesitant about AI, technology evolution cannot be stopped or banned, as students will inevitably use these tools anyway. Instead, we must deploy responsible AI at scale and frame it as a thinking partner. There is a vast difference between a student using AI to lazily generate an essay and one using it to test hypotheses and sharpen their critical thinking.
By implementing strong governance, involving teachers, and guiding students on ethical use, we ensure technology enhances human potential rather than replacing it.
