Who is actually building AI in Lebanese hands.

A legal AI operating system rather than a chat wrapper. Its engine, Justinian, is described by the company as the governed pipeline around the model rather than a prompt sitting on top of one, routing a query through security, orchestration and firm knowledge before it answers, and across more than one model provider. Practice management, payments and institutional workflow sit on top.

Beirut. Antoine Kanaan, co-founder and CEO. Abbas Kabalan, co-founder and Chief Legal Officer.

Evidence. Wamda and L'Orient Today both reported a 3 million dollar round in February 2026, led by Sowlutions Ventures. Reporting at the time put the platform at more than 7,000 clients; HAQQ's own site now claims 15,000 or more legal teams, so the figure has moved and both are shown with their dates rather than merged. Both founders are named on the company's own site. On 17 October 2026 HAQQ signed a cooperation protocol with the Southern Giza Bar Association in Egypt, reported the same day by Al-Gomhuria and Al Mal News, both quoting the association's president Nasser Maher Awad. HAQQ calls itself the association's official technology partner. It follows a protocol with the New Cairo Bar Association signed on 11 October 2026 at the American University in Cairo, where HAQQ says it is the official and exclusive technology partner. The membership figures, more than 33,000 lawyers in Southern Giza and about 22,000 in New Cairo, come from HAQQ's announcements and are repeated unchanged in the press, so no independent count is behind them. Both reports say priorities and technical requirements are still to be set, so the work has not started.

Funding. 3 million dollars, February 2026, led by Sowlutions Ventures

Annahar launched Nahar in July 2026, an AI news correspondent that scans thousands of sources, tracks developments, translates, compares and summarises, and surfaces leads for reporters. Tueni put it publicly as a partner to journalists rather than a replacement, with editors keeping verification, accuracy and every final editorial call.

Beirut, publishing since 1933. Nayla Tueni, editor in chief. The AI correspondent was built with Points Information Technology.

Evidence. Arab News, Communicate Online and BroadcastPro ME all reported the July 2026 launch. The technology partner, Points Information Technology, is named by the company, and Tueni is named on the record. Read it next to the 2024 AI President campaign, which the same house ran with Impact BBDO during the presidential vacancy: Nahar is a newsroom tool and that was an advertising campaign, and a directory that lists one without naming the other is not being straight with the reader.

Funding. No round reported. In house product

A live map of world events, built from more than 450 verified sources. A rules based engine ranks events by severity, algorithms scan for escalation patterns, and a language model refines the classification. Open source, and built by its author in a single day because he wanted it for himself.

Beirut. Elie Habib, founder. Co-founder of Anghami, LAU computer engineering.

Evidence. LAU News profiled the build in 2026. Arabian Business and L'Orient Today both reported the traffic independently: more than four million visitors from 174 countries within weeks of launch. Habib is a matter of public record as co-founder of Anghami, listed on NASDAQ as ANGH.

Funding. Side project, no round reported

The region's music streaming platform, and the only Lebanese founded company on this page listed on a US exchange. It belongs in an AI directory for the same reason Spotify does: the recommendation and personalisation layer is the product, not a feature bolted onto it.

Founded in Beirut, now headquartered in Abu Dhabi. Eddy Maroun and Elie Habib, co-founders.

Evidence. Listed on NASDAQ as ANGH. Founded in Beirut in 2012 by two Lebanese engineers, one of whom went on to build World Monitor. We file it as Lebanon origin rather than Lebanon based, because the headquarters moved and pretending otherwise would be the exact sort of thing this page exists to stop.

Funding. Public company, NASDAQ: ANGH

Founded in 2017 as a legal platform built by lawyers and engineers together, connecting people to legal information and to the lawyers who could act on it. It was one of the earliest Lebanese attempts at applied AI inside a regulated profession. As of September 2026 the product no longer presents itself as one. lexyom.com redirects to lexyomlaw.com, which describes Lexyom LLP as a law firm specialising in financial services, corporate structuring and cross border regulation, and carries the line Representing Global Financial Institutions Since 1974. Nothing on it mentions artificial intelligence, automation or a legal technology product.

Beirut at founding. The firm now lists offices in New York and Dubai.. Nadine Imad, managing partner. Rami Alame, partner. Magda Farhat was named as a co-founder of the original platform.

Evidence. Founded 2 February 2017. Incubated at the Nucleus, finalist at the HiiL Innovating Justice Award in 2017, backed by 500 Startups. Around 150,000 dollars raised, which Tracxn records as the highest of any Lebanese legal services company. What changed is on the company's own site. On 23 September 2026 we opened lexyom.com and were redirected to lexyomlaw.com, where the business is presented as a law firm and not as a product. The team page names Nadine Imad as managing partner and Rami Alame as partner, alongside associates and an operations lead, which is a firm's structure rather than a startup's. The only published contact address belongs to Alame and Partners. We have found no announcement from the founders explaining the change, and we do not infer one. The entry stays on the record because the 2017 to 2020 attempt is part of the history of Lebanese legal AI, and because HAQQ is now on the road Lexyom took first. It is no longer counted as an operating Lebanese AI product.

Thin. Marked thin because the company has not published anything explaining what happened to the platform. The 1974 date on the current site belongs to the legal practice and not to Lexyom, which was founded in 2017, and nothing we can open reconciles the two. Whether the technology was wound down, absorbed into the firm or is still running behind it is not published anywhere we could reach.

Funding. Around 150,000 dollars

AI training in three published levels, Foundations, Practitioner and Mastery, plus corporate programmes and consulting across the region. The closest thing Lebanon has to a dedicated AI school with a curriculum you can read before you pay for it.

Beirut. Community founded, with a publicly listed team.

Evidence. Public curriculum, named instructors and a working site, all opened and read by hand. Listed here as infrastructure rather than as a startup, because that is what it is. On 19 September 2026 ZAKA ran the first Lebanon AI Festival at Beirut Digital District. By its own account more than 2,000 people registered and over 1,000 attended through the day, and Minister Kamal Shehadi spoke at the opening.

Funding. Not disclosed

The community behind AI Weekend and the meetup series run with Berytech. Not a company, and we do not dress it up as one, but leaving it out of a record of Lebanese AI would make the record wrong.

Beirut. Volunteer run community.

Evidence. Runs a public events programme with Berytech, and appears on our own calendar with its source link. Classed as an organisation, not a company, and it carries no funding claim.

Funding. Not a company

Computer vision pointed at the least glamorous problem in consumer goods. Field teams photograph a shelf, image recognition turns the photograph into structured data, and an AI assistant answers questions against the result. Merchandising, mystery shopping, trade promotion and field sales run on top of it.

Beirut Digital District. No founders are named on the company site, so we name none.

Evidence. Their contact page lists an office at BDD 1082, Bechara el Khoury, Beirut. The site claims more than ten thousand teams worldwide, which we report as a company claim rather than a verified figure. Note the homepage statistics block currently renders zeroes in every counter, so those numbers are not usable.

Funding. Not disclosed

A live public safety map for Lebanon. It reads Lebanese public sources, uses AI to identify and classify incidents, and plots them with their source and a confidence level: airstrikes, shelling, incursions, gunfire, evacuation warnings, road closures, protests, fires and crime. Arabic and English, with translated alerts. No account needed to browse, no location tracking, no ads.

Registered in Sharjah, product is Lebanon only. No founders are named anywhere on the site, so we name none.

Evidence. Thin on the company, strong on the product, and we say which. Their contact page states Mouwaten is operated by Mouwaten FZE, based in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. What makes it Lebanese is the product: the map, the alerts and the entire incident feed cover Lebanon and nothing else. The app is live on Google Play as com.mouwaten.app. Their own site publishes the line that reports may be unverified or incomplete, which is an unusually honest disclosure for a safety product and is why it clears our bar rather than falling foul of it.

Funding. Not disclosed

A marketplace where the freelancers are AI agents. A client posts a task with a price and verification criteria, agents claim it, and the money held in escrow is released only once the result passes. Bounty takes 10 percent.

New York. Rayan Dabbagh, co-founder. Grand Lycee Franco Libanais in Beirut, then Georgia Tech, then AWS. Co-founders Aashna Doshi, formerly of Google, and Shivam Patel.

Evidence. L'Orient Today reported the launch and traced Dabbagh's route out of Beirut at seventeen, from the Grand Lycee to Georgia Tech to AWS. Backed by a 1 million dollar investment from Andreessen Horowitz.

Funding. 1 million dollars from Andreessen Horowitz

Turns lab results and medical data into something a patient can actually read, sold to diagnostic labs and health insurers. More than 35 million patients across 18 markets since 2016.

Founded in Dubai, headquartered in Vienna. Offices include Beirut.. Nadine Nehme, co-founder and Chief Science Officer, Lebanese, PhD supervised by Professor Jules Hoffmann. Co-founders Baher Al Hakim and Makram Saleh.

Evidence. Routinely listed elsewhere as a Lebanon based company. It is not. The company's own about page records the founding in Dubai in 2015 and the move to Vienna in 2016, with Beirut as one of five offices. The Lebanese connection is real, but it runs through a founder rather than a headquarters, and it is filed accordingly.

Funding. Series A and beyond. Forbes Middle East lists it among the region's most funded startups

Corporate cards with software that automates expense management, bill payments, procurement and accounting. Here because it is the largest company any Lebanese born founder currently runs, and because the automation layer genuinely is the product.

New York. Karim Atiyeh, co-founder, born and raised in Lebanon, now Co-CEO. Previously co-founded Paribus, backed by Y Combinator and sold to Capital One in 2016.

Evidence. Atiyeh was born and raised in Lebanon, holds a BA and an MS from Harvard, and is named on Ramp's own site as co-founder and Co-CEO. Most Lebanese coverage still calls him CTO, which is out of date. This is a diaspora entry, not a Lebanese company, and the difference is not blurred here.

Funding. Private. A 750 million dollar Series F at a 44 billion dollar valuation in June 2026. On 15 October 2026 Ramp announced a further 1.85 billion dollars at a 60 billion dollar valuation, led by Dragoneer Investment Group with Thrive Capital, Founders Fund, Sands Capital and Avenir Growth as co-leads. Bloomberg had first reported the round on 9 October.

Interactive world models for machines that act in the physical world, aimed at robotics and autonomous systems rather than at chat. The company publishes TOWA as its model, Genesis as a platform for building operators, and Stream as a multimodal interface. Tarifi’s stated bet is that the architecture of the neocortex, not larger language models, is the route to general capability.

Tokyo and Silicon Valley. Jad Tarifi, co-founder, CEO and Chief AI Scientist. Born and raised in Lebanon. He started Google’s first generative AI team in 2013. Co-founded with Nima Asgharbeygi.

Evidence. The Japan Times profiled the company in March 2026 and records that Tarifi was born and raised in Lebanon, that he started Google’s first generative AI team in 2013, and that Integral AI is built around neocortex inspired architecture. The company site names him as co-founder and CEO and states the two locations. This is a Lebanese founder running a Japanese company, not a Lebanese company, and the tier says so.

Thin. The company may no longer be trading. Tarifi and his co-founder Nima Asgharbeygi are now listed as CEO and CTO of a new company, Superintelligence Foundry, on its own site. Crypto Briefing reported on 18 August 2026 that Integral AI had struggled to raise follow-on funding after a seed of roughly 5 million dollars. A bankruptcy has been reported but we could not open a court record or a primary report confirming it, and Integral AI's own site shows nothing newer than 2025. Kept on the register, marked thin, until the company's status can be confirmed.

Funding. Not disclosed

A curated angel network for Lebanese and diaspora founded startups. Angels come in at 25,000 dollars each, the network puts roughly 150,000 dollars into a company, and the stated target is 35 to 40 seed stage names. The strategy points explicitly at the AI application layer at pre seed and seed.

Launched in Beirut, the investment vehicle is domiciled in Luxembourg. Run by BY Venture Partners, co-founded by Ghaith Yafi and Abdallah Yafi. Launched with Lebanon's Ministry of Technology and Artificial Intelligence, opened by Minister Kamal Shehadi.

Evidence. Beirut Digital District and Wamda both reported the launch on 11 May 2026, with Minister Kamal Shehadi opening it. The 5 million dollar figure is soft commitments at launch, reported by Beirut Digital District. Wamda reported that commitments exceeded the initial target but did not print an amount, and did not name the investors.

Thin. LAIN has published nothing under its own name and there is no LAIN page on byvp.com, so every figure here rests on third party reporting. The firm is written B&Y Venture Partners by Wamda and BY Venture Partners on its own site, whose listed contact address is in Jersey. This entry stays marked thin until LAIN sources itself.

Funding. 5 million dollars in soft commitments at launch, May 2026

Ten million dollars from a shipping group to establish and endow a named AI institute inside AUB's newest faculty, signed at a ceremony on the AUB campus and announced by CMA CGM on 11 September 2026 and by AUB on 12 September. Saade called it the group's first academic partnership of this scale in AI. Research runs through thematic clusters, the first named being the CMA CGM Data, Decisions and Operations Cluster: logistics optimisation and network design, forecasting, pricing and yield management, research computing and automation, resilience and disruption management, and sustainable operations. The institute is also to run upskilling certificates, professional diplomas and hands on learning. The school that houses it is AUB's eighth faculty and plans more than 25 core faculty including 18 new faculty lines, with BS, MS and PhD programmes and a first student cohort in autumn 2027.

Beirut, inside the American University of Beirut's School of Computing and Data Sciences. The donor, CMA CGM, is a French group with its head office in Marseille. Signed by Fadlo Khuri, AUB president, and Rodolphe Saade, CMA CGM chairman and chief executive. Opening remarks by Zaher Dawy, AUB provost, and Jihad Touma, founding director of the School of Computing and Data Sciences.

Evidence. Both parties have now published the announcement under their own names: CMA CGM in its newsroom on 11 September 2026 and AUB on its own site on 12 September 2026, with the same text, the same figure and the same names. Neither release prints the day of the ceremony, so this entry gives the announcement dates and not a signing date. Both stand as company statements, each party's own account of its own agreement. Arab News carried the same text under its corporate and sponsored content section, and Businessnews.com.lb and Data Portuaria carried it too. Two further facts belong next to this one. The Lebanon connection runs through the founding family rather than through the company: CMA CGM was founded by Jacques Saade, is headquartered in Marseille, and Rodolphe Saade was born in Beirut in 1970. Separately, the institute's first research cluster is the donor's own operating problem set, and CMA CGM has run the container terminal at the Port of Beirut since 2022 on a ten year contract. On the same day it announced the institute, CMA CGM announced 100 million dollars to expand that terminal from 1.2 to 2.8 million containers a year and from 45 to 80 hectares, with Prime Minister Nawaf Salam present. Neither fact is an objection to the gift. Both are things a reader weighing the institute would want in front of them. Nothing is delivered yet: the institute exists by agreement and the first students arrive in 2027.

Gift. 10 million dollars from CMA CGM to establish and endow the institute, announced 11 September 2026. The split between establishment and endowment is not published by either party.

Lebanon has an AI minister, a published national roadmap and a government AI summit. It does not yet have an AI ministry. The Council of Ministers ratified a draft law in September 2025 to turn the office into a full ministry, and Parliament referred it to joint committees rather than passing it. Until that law passes, every document MITAI issues comes from an office, not a ministry.

Beirut. Not a ministry yet. It operates as the Office of the Minister of State for Information Technology and AI, OMSITAI, inside the Council of Ministers. Kamal Shehadi, Minister of the Displaced and Minister of State for Technology and Artificial Intelligence, holding both portfolios at once.

Evidence. The government states this itself. Page 5 of its own strategy deck carries the footnote that OMSITAI will become MITAI once the MITAI law is approved by Parliament, which is as plain as it gets. Credit Libanais research recorded the Council of Ministers ratifying the draft law in a note published 16 September 2025, and the National News Agency carried the political reaction to it. SMEX, the Beirut digital rights organisation, published its objections on 31 July 2026 and recorded that Parliament had sent the bill to joint committees, so it was still unpassed ten months after Cabinet approved it. On 5 October 2026 a subcommittee of the joint committees, chaired by MP Tony Frangieh and attended by Shehadi, began going through the draft law article by article, and Daily Beirut reported on 6 October that a significant number of articles had been completed, without saying how many remain. On 8 October 2026 President Joseph Aoun publicly urged the swift creation of the ministry, saying Lebanon is far behind other countries, as MTV Lebanon reported that evening. The New Arab reported on 10 October that he urged Parliament to expedite the law, and that the ministry's establishment depends on it. We could not confirm the exact date of the Cabinet session from a record we can open, so we print the month and not the day.

Status. Draft law ratified by the Council of Ministers in September 2025. Under article by article review in a parliamentary subcommittee since 5 October 2026, and still unpassed as of 10 October 2026, when the President was reported urging Parliament to expedite it.

A five year strategy in four stages: Launch at 100 days, Enact at one year, Advance at three years, Promote at five. Four priorities sit under it, Future Ready Infrastructure, Accelerated Innovation, Empowered Talent, and Growth and Investments. The 2030 targets it names are at least 500 million dollars of AI investment attracted, an AI first government with 80 percent or more of services digitised and every agency migrated to cloud, 10,000 or more AI engineers trained and retained in Lebanon each year, and ICT employment rising from 1 to 2 percent of the workforce to around 5 percent.

Issued by the Office of the Minister of State for Information Technology and AI. Published under Kamal Shehadi. The deck names no authoring firm.

Evidence. Read from the government's own deck, Lebanon's Digital and AI Transformation, A Strategic Roadmap by the Minister of State for Technology and AI, downloaded from mitai.gov.lb and opened page by page. The cover records it as shared 15 May 2025 and updated 5 March 2026, so it is a live document rather than a launch artefact. Every figure above is quoted from its own slides 15 to 17 and none of it is our estimate. Note what the deck does not contain: no delivery budget, and no published reporting line against which the 100 day or one year stages can be checked. It also cites the older Lebanon Digital Strategy 2020 to 2030 as its source on governance, so the roadmap sits on top of an existing strategy rather than replacing it.

Targets. At least 500 million dollars of AI investment attracted by 2030, and a stated 3 to 4 billion dollar GDP uplift by 2035. No delivery budget appears anywhere in the document.

On 25 September 2026 the UAE and Lebanon announced a programme to give one million Lebanese people practical training in generative AI and prompt engineering, open to every age and background. It was announced in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. On 1 October Shehadi told Arab News that Lebanon sits at 27 percent AI adoption, that stopping at the first 1.1 million people is not enough, and that he wants at least half the population using AI within a couple of years.

Run under the UAE's Government Experience Exchange Programme, in cooperation with the Government of Lebanon. Announced by Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed, UAE Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam. Kamal Shehadi, Minister of State for Technology and Artificial Intelligence, speaks for it on the Lebanese side.

Evidence. Read from the UAE Foreign Ministry's own release of 25 September 2026, which names the programme, the umbrella it runs under and what it teaches. The National reported the launch the same day. The Shehadi figures are quoted from Arab News of 1 October. The New Arab of 10 October repeats the one million target. HAQQ, already on this register, said publicly on 25 September that it is ready to help deliver it. In an interview with An-Nahar published 30 September 2026, Shehadi said about 20,000 Lebanese had registered so far for the courses on the ministry's own training platform, that the aim is one million people trained within four or five years, that the basic course takes about four hours and needs no technical background, and that anyone living in Lebanon can take it.

Thin. Almost nothing about delivery is published. No budget, no delivery partner and no definition of what counts as an expert. The only timeline, four or five years, and the only enrolment figure, about 20,000, come from the minister in an interview, not from a document. Two of the three figures Shehadi gives come from an interview, not a document. SMEX raised questions about the programme in L'Orient-Le Jour on 8 October, behind a paywall we could not read past. The entry stays thin until a curriculum, a provider or a first cohort can be opened.

Status. Announced 25 September 2026. Funding, timeline and delivery partner not published.

The route by which AUB puts students and researchers in front of the Lebanese state. On 5 December 2025 it signed two memoranda with the Office of the Minister of State for Technology and AI: a national partnership on digital transformation and institutional capacity, and Code for Lebanon, run with Htech, putting students on applied civic technology work.

Beirut, American University of Beirut, run through the Issam Fares Institute. Joseph Bahout, director of the Issam Fares Institute and GEP co lead. Fadi El-Jardali, managing director and co lead.

Evidence. AUB published the signing on its own site on 5 December 2025 and names everyone in the room, including Fadlo Khuri as president, Kamal Shehadi as minister and Zaher Dawy as provost. The National News Agency carried it too. What neither announcement carries is a timeline, a budget or a measurable target, and a memorandum of understanding binds nobody to anything, so this is filed as a relationship that exists rather than as work delivered.

Thin. GEP publishes no page of its own that we could open. Both co leads are named only inside AUB's own announcement and in reporting of it, and there is no public record of what either memorandum has produced since December 2025. The entry stays marked thin until GEP sources itself.

Status. Two memoranda of understanding signed 5 December 2025. No budget, timeline or target published by either party.

On 14 September 2026 Lebanon signed the charter of the Digital Cooperation Organization and became a signatory member. Membership takes effect only when Lebanon completes its national accession procedures and deposits its instrument of accession. Alongside the signature the two sides announced a Lebanon Digital Prosperity Plan covering digital policy, infrastructure and connectivity, artificial intelligence and emerging technologies, skills, entrepreneurship, innovation and investment. Lebanon is one of eight candidates the DCO Council approved on 28 August 2026, with Albania, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Palestine, Syria and Zambia, which would take the organisation from 16 to 24 members.

Signed in Riyadh at the headquarters of the Digital Cooperation Organization, an intergovernmental body of 16 member states. Kamal Shehadi, Minister of the Displaced and Minister of State for Technology and Artificial Intelligence, signed for Lebanon and handed the charter to Deemah AlYahya, DCO Secretary General.

Evidence. Read from the DCO's own release of 14 September 2026 and its own release of 28 August 2026 on the eight candidates, both on dco.org. The DCO describes the plan as written so that its results can be measured, and AlYahya is quoted saying the signature is the easy part and the plan is the test. The release also prints two figures about Lebanon, internet penetration of around 91 percent in 2024 and around 550 ICT companies, without saying where they come from, so they stand as the DCO's own figures. Cyprus Mail reported the signing on 15 September from the same release, adding that Cyprus is already a member.

Thin. The Digital Prosperity Plan itself is not published. The DCO release says what it covers and nothing about a budget, a timeline, a first deliverable or who reports on it. Everything here rests on the DCO's account. There is no Lebanese government account of the signing on mitai.gov.lb: its news page opens, but its newest item when we checked on 17 October 2026 was dated 16 December 2025. The entry stays marked thin until the plan text and Lebanon's own account can be opened.

Status. Signatory member since 14 September 2026. Full membership on completion of national accession procedures and deposit of the instrument of accession. No budget or timeline is published for the plan.