AI & Technology

UAE Artificial Intelligence Office and Mastercard Select Six Startups to Advance in Lighthouse Accelerator Program

In collaboration with the Mastercard Center for Advanced AI and Cyber Technology in Dubai, the cohort enters a four-month acceleration track targeting agentic commerce and SME credit solutions.

By 19Network Editorial Team · Aug 15, 2026 · 5 min read

Six startup representatives pose with Mastercard and UAE AI Office officials at a modern professional launch event.

The UAE AI Office and Mastercard announce six breakthrough fintech and AI startups advancing to the mentorship stage of the inaugural Mastercard Lighthouse UAE.

Key Takeaways

Six Startups Selected: The UAE AI Office and Mastercard announced the six startups selected for the inaugural Mastercard Lighthouse UAE program: Loyyal, NewForm Technologies, NodeShift, Polynome, Valura.Ai, and zypl.ai.
Four-Month Intensive Track: Finalists enter an intensive four-month mentorship and business scaling initiative connecting them directly with financial institutions, investors, and enterprise technology leaders.
Core Technical Domains: Focuses on agentic commerce, AI-driven hyper-personalization, cyber resilience, enterprise risk management, and alternative SME credit scoring models.
Public-Private Innovation Synergy: Jointly driven by the UAE Artificial Intelligence, Digital Economy and Remote Work Applications Office and the Mastercard Center for Advanced AI and Cyber Technology in Dubai.
Global Commercialization Pipeline: Serves as a structured bridge to transform local and international proof-of-concept AI solutions into scalable enterprise products across global markets.

The UAE Artificial Intelligence, Digital Economy and Remote Work Applications Office, in strategic collaboration with the Mastercard Center for Advanced AI and Cyber Technology in Dubai, has officially announced the six artificial intelligence startups selected to advance to the next stage of the inaugural Mastercard Lighthouse UAE acceleration program. The initiative represents an operational bridge between sovereign digital policy and global financial technology ecosystems, designed to scale high-potential enterprise artificial intelligence applications into global markets. Following an intensive evaluation process evaluating technical maturity, proprietary IP, and commercial viability, six startups were selected to join the inaugural cohort: Loyyal , NewForm Technologies , NodeShift , Polynome , Valura.Ai , and zypl.ai . Each enterprise addresses critical bottlenecks across the modern financial and computational value chains, spanning decentralized cloud infrastructure, automated risk modeling, blockchain-backed loyalty architectures, and generative synthetic data generation. The selected founders will participate in a four-month structured program led by global experts in enterprise AI architecture, cybersecurity, commercial law, and venture financing. Rather than operating as a purely theoretical accelerator, Lighthouse UAE focuses on commercial validation, pilot deployments, and integration within Mastercard’s international network of banking partners, payment…

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