'The Studio’ Announced at MWC Doha - Qatar’s First AI-Focused Venture Studio for Emerging Markets

Doha, Qatar, November 2025. Utopia Capital Management (UTOPIA) today announces ‘The Studio’, creating new opportunities for entrepreneurs and venture building across the Global South. Supported by Qatar Development Bank (QDB), The Studio is an AI-native Venture builder purpose-built to transform high-barrier problems into scalable, investable companies.

Qatar - a launchpad for the Global South
The Studio was presented in a live panel at Mobile World Congress Doha, and represents Qatar’s first AI-focused venture studio, partnering with QDB to attract both local and international founders and talent. The Studio is already working with the first group of entrepreneurs and over the next five years it aims to develop 140 venture concepts and support over 50 Pre-Seed to Series-A ventures, across the Global South. The team is a 12+ full time experts across product, tech/AI, commercial growth and operations. The Studio contributes to Qatar National Vision 2030 by building human capital and diversifying the economy.

A New Venture Model for the AI Era
The Studio partners with domain expert founders from concept to Series A, to co-build new ventures and re-engineer existing startups for AI-driven growth. The Studio taps into capital, local expertise and network, through UTOPIA’s A-typical Ventures fund in the Middle East and The Radical Fund in Southeast Asia. It also leverages UTOPIA OS — a modular, adaptive AI tech-stack tailored to each venture — compressing the path from concept to Series A to under 24 months.

Alina Truhina, Co-Founding Partner of UTOPIA, said: “The Studio is the final piece of the puzzle in our UTOPIA platform - bringing together our funds, founders and technology to efficiently scale ideas into investable ventures across the Global South. From our new base in Qatar, we provide hands-on support and align fast capital, to power AI-native and tech-enabled ventures. Unlike accelerators or open programmes, The Studio is highly selective and curated - designed for industry specialists with deep experience and unique data access in their fields.”

Mr. Mohammed Al-Emadi, Executive Director of Incubation and Venture Capital Investment at Qatar Development Bank (QDB), said: “The Studio is a direct expression of QDB’s strategy, aligned with Qatar's Third National Development Strategy to build an innovation-driven, diversified economy. By combining The Studio’s venture-building expertise with Utopia’s VC investment expertise and QDB's comprehensive support, it enables local and international founders and tech talent to turn complex, high-barrier problems into scalable, AI-native companies. The Studio adds a critical new layer to Qatar’s entrepreneurial ecosystem and strengthens the country’s position as a hub for frontier technology in the region and beyond.”

Backing Domain Experts
The Studio backs experts in thematic opportunity clusters UTOPIA calls “PODs”, starting with:

• Digital Infrastructure - Maintenance intelligence, neo-clouds, data center and energy software, along with the core systems behind the energy transition and resource infrastructure.
• Industry Experts - Deep domain-experts across technical fields such as surgery, chemistry and advanced engineering.
• Sovereignty - Core systems in security, deep technology and government intelligence.

Karan Pinto, Studio Director at UTOPIA, said: “Each of our PODs focuses on overlooked challenges where AI and deep technologies such as quantum can create businesses built for long-term success, grounded in needs that stay constant even as tools evolve - from digital infrastructure to critical industrial intelligence and sovereign security. By co-building with domain experts, whose lived experience already gives them an edge, The Studio will turn specialist insight into ventures that can scale faster and smarter across emerging markets, while shaping the directional arrows of progress in systems that matter.”

The Studio is actively seeking exceptional entrepreneurs across the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Africa, and other emerging markets. The organisation is also expanding its world-class team of product, AI, commercial, and operations experts. Founders and talent ready to build the next generation of AI-native ventures are encouraged to reach out.