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Mariam Al-Yazidi

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  • 4 min read
  • Dubai posted 41.7 billion dollars in diamond trade during 2025, a fresh record for the emirate.
  • Traders moved 359.5 million carats, the first time record value and record volume landed in one year.
  • Natural diamonds drove the result, generating 39.9 billion dollars and 95.8 percent of the total value.
  • Coloured gemstones reached 1.1 billion dollars, showing wider strength across Dubai’s precious stones market.

Dubai’s total diamond trade reached a new all-time high during 2025 across every major category. Official figures from Dubai Customs place the yearly diamond total at 41.7 billion dollars overall. This result beats the earlier record of 40.9 billion dollars set back in 2011. Traders also moved 359.5 million carats, a volume rising 42.5 percent from last year. DMCC has announced today that, for the first time, the Emirate of Dubai hit record value and record volume in one year. Dubai diamond trade 2025 figures show steady demand across natural stones and coloured gemstones. Total trade value climbed 16.2 percent from the 35.8 billion dollars recorded during 2024.

The market added 5.8 billion dollars in fresh trade across a single twelve-month span. Dubai now works as a key gateway linking mines, cutting hubs, and buyer markets worldwide. Producers ship rough stones here, while cutters and traders prepare them for retail shelves. Retail demand in India, the United States, and Europe keeps large orders flowing steadily. Strong regulation and secure vaults give global buyers real confidence in each recorded deal. Access to finance also helps smaller firms trade larger stone volumes across each season. Grading services and clear customs steps move each shipment through the emirate at speed.

Why Dubai’s total diamond trade reached a new all-time high

Records confirm Dubai’s total diamond trade reached a new all-time high through natural stone strength. Natural diamond trade value hit 39.9 billion dollars, near 95.8 percent of the total. Dubai traded 205.2 million carats of natural rough stones, the second highest volume on record. Rough volume rose by nearly 34 percent, showing strong appetite among global cutting and polishing centres. Polished natural trade reached 18.7 billion dollars, a rise of nearly 25 percent from 2024. Over five years, Dubai’s total diamond trade reached a new all-time high with 139 percent value growth.

Average value per carat rose about eight to nine times across the same five-year window. Ten-year data shows Dubai’s wider diamond trade rose 63 percent by value overall. Volume across the same decade climbed 44 percent, a sign of deeper market roots. Investors read these gains as proof of steady policy and reliable long-term trade rules. Ahmed Bin Sulayem, DMCC’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, tied the results to long planning.

He said: “Dubai’s latest diamond trade figures demonstrate the success of a long-term strategy to build the world’s most connected, transparent, and efficient precious stones ecosystem. Since the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, we have seen trade through Dubai double in physical volume and grow by almost 140% in value. For natural polished diamonds alone, value has grown by 246%. We are the partner of choice for producers, manufacturers, traders, and retailers across the global industry. Through world-class infrastructure, regulatory certainty, access to finance, and one of the world’s most sophisticated ecosystems for precious stones, we will continue to provide the platform the industry needs to grow.”

Leadership and demand behind the record

DMCC’s diamond trade leaders point to strong demand from producers, manufacturers, and global retailers. Buyers worldwide noticed Dubai’s total diamond trade reached a new all-time high last year. From my view, this run signals real staying power for the emirate’s precious stones sector.

Reports on coloured gemstones Dubai handled last year show a record 1.1 billion dollars. This category grew 48 percent, with imports up 68.8 percent and re-exports up 33.5 percent. Synthetic and industrial diamonds now make up nearly 39 percent of total carat volume. DMCC runs the Dubai Diamond Exchange, the region’s largest tender site for precious stones. The Emirate also hosts many tenders and auctions for both rough and polished stones. Each tender draws bidders from Africa, Asia, and Europe onto a single trading floor. You can watch these figures to judge where global diamond demand heads through 2026. The exchange keeps Dubai near the front of the entire world’s diamond trading network.

TAGS
  • DMCC, Dubai, Economy, UAE

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Lamborghini Revuelto SV
  • Lamborghini

The Lamborghini Revuelto SV launched Friday as a limited-edition hybrid version of the automaker’s V12 flagship, and the company is calling it the fastest, most powerful production car it has ever built. Only 1,963 will be made worldwide.

The number carries meaning. It marks the year Lamborghini was founded, a detail the brand has leaned on before with other limited runs. Buyers who secure one join a small club that tends to hold its value well after the sale.

What powers the Revuelto SV?

The Revuelto SV starts with Lamborghini’s naturally aspirated V12 engine and pairs it with three electric motors. Combined, the setup pushes output past 1,050 horsepower, enough to send the car from a standstill to 100 kph, or 62 mph, in 2.4 seconds. That places the Revuelto SV among the quickest production cars sold anywhere.

Alessandro Farmeschi, the Revuelto’s product line director, told CNBC the SV gives buyers a way to push further into what the platform can do. “The Revuelto SV gives our customers the opportunity to go beyond in terms of performance,” he said. He described the goal as building something race-oriented while keeping the experience fun rather than purely clinical.

The V12 remains central to that mission. Farmeschi pointed to engine sound as a defining part of what buyers expect from the brand. “The V12 has been the key since the very beginning, since the foundation of the company,” he said. The hybrid system adds power without pulling focus from that signature note.

Design changes built for the track

Lamborghini announced that beyond the powertrain, the Revuelto SV picks up sharper aerodynamic elements. Lamborghini reworked the fins, wings, and air intakes to direct airflow more precisely and generate added downforce at speed. A retuned suspension and new carbon-ceramic brakes back up the extra power, and a new Pilota driving mode unlocks a setup built specifically for track use.

The cabin follows the same theme. Lamborghini refitted the interior to feel closer to a race car or fighter jet cockpit than a road car. Buyers can choose sport seats built around a carbon shell, or step up to optional monocoque carbon fiber race seats. The latter trade some comfort for a more direct connection to the car, similar to what a driver would find in motorsport.

Pricing and demand for the Revuelto SV

The Revuelto SV starts at $741,172, a jump over the standard Revuelto that reflects both the added hardware and the limited production run. Lamborghini’s past limited editions have often sold out before the public even sees a formal announcement, and SV variants in particular tend to draw stronger demand and higher resale prices in the collector market.

Farmeschi framed the appeal beyond raw numbers. “When you buy a Lamborghini, you buy a Lamborghini because you want it, because you like it, you want to experience driving it, but also because it’s a car that keeps its value over time,” he said. For a car built in such small numbers, that combination of desire and scarcity tends to matter as much as the spec sheet.

Photo Credit: Lamborghini

  • 3 min read
Nvidia Lines Up $500 bn for AI Buildout
  • AI Investments

Nvidia just found $500 bn for AI buildout, and it didn’t have to write the check itself.

On Monday, the chipmaker announced memorandums of understanding with six of Wall Street’s biggest names: Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs and KKR. The goal is to stand up independent compute financing platforms that pull in more than $500 billion in third-party capital, money that flows toward building the data centers running on Nvidia hardware.

Think of it like a mortgage for GPUs. Instead of a cloud provider or AI lab draining its own balance sheet to buy chips, an outside lender fronts the capital, and the GPU cluster itself, plus the revenue it generates, backs the loan. That’s the model Nvidia is pitching to the market this week.

Why $500 bn for AI Buildout Matters Now

Big Tech isn’t slowing down. Combined AI spending across the major players is on track to clear $730 billion this year alone. Every one of those dollars has to come from somewhere, and increasingly, that somewhere is outside the tech companies’ own books.

This is where Nvidia AI financing platforms come in. The arrangements are designed to widen access to Nvidia-based infrastructure for frontier AI developers, enterprises, governments and cloud providers. For the six financial firms, it opens a new kind of long-duration, usage-linked investment tied directly to compute demand rather than to a company’s broader credit profile.

Huang framed it plainly in Nvidia’s statement: “These financing platforms will help customers access scarce compute at scale and build the AI factories that will power every industry and country in the age of AI.” Nvidia also said the setup would create dedicated pools of capital at attractive rates, though it stopped short of naming a timetable or individual commitment sizes.

What This AI Infrastructure Financing Actually Looks Like

Here’s the part worth watching closely. Nvidia hasn’t disclosed which of the six firms will lend, which will insure, and which will package and resell the risk. KKR has already floated the idea of securitizing AI infrastructure revenue, carving it into pieces institutional investors can buy. BlackRock’s Larry Fink went further, comparing the setup to the early mortgage-backed securities market of the 1970s.

That comparison cuts both ways. Mortgage-backed securities eventually built a trillion-dollar market. They also became infamous decades later. Nobody is claiming AI compute financing will follow that same arc, but the analogy signals how seriously Wall Street is treating this compute financing opportunity.

Huang has also said Nvidia itself may back up to 25 percent of a given financing deal, which keeps the company financially tied to its own customer base. If demand for AI computing power cools, Nvidia isn’t fully insulated from that risk. It’s a partner in the platforms, not just a hardware vendor standing on the sidelines.

The Numbers Behind the $500 bn for AI Buildout Push

None of the six firms has confirmed exactly how much capital they’ll each put toward the effort. The $500 billion figure describes the target ceiling across all six platforms combined, not a jointly pooled fund sitting ready to deploy. Terms, borrowers and timelines remain, in Nvidia’s own words, still being worked out.

Still, the direction is clear. This is meant to be the first AI data center funding structure of its kind at this scale, built specifically around Nvidia’s ecosystem. BlackRock and Goldman Sachs both manage retirement and pension money, so if the platforms scale as planned, exposure to AI infrastructure debt could eventually touch retirement accounts most people never think to connect to a GPU order.

The Financial Times reported the deal first on Monday, with Reuters confirming shortly after. For now, the framework is set. The dollar figures, and the risk that comes with them, are still being written.

  • 4 min read
eRedCap live network test
  • Telecom

e& UAE has completed an eRedCap live network test on its commercial 5G network, the first such test announced by any telecom operator. eRedCap, short for enhanced Reduced Capability, is a stripped-down version of 5G built for devices that do not need full 5G speed or power. The company said the result gives businesses and public bodies a practical way to move Internet of Things (IoT) equipment off older LTE technology and onto a 5G-native IoT platform.

What the eRedCap live network test showed

The eRedCap live network test ran on e& UAE’s live commercial network, not a lab setup. Engineers reached download speeds of up to 10Mbps on eRedCap devices while using a 5MHz slice of NR-FDD spectrum. A Data Transmission Unit, a module that sends device data across the network, confirmed the service worked from end to end. That narrow 5MHz channel matters. It keeps device hardware simple and cheap, which suits equipment made in large volumes.

eRedCap 5G IoT sits between two extremes. Full 5G handles phones and heavy data. Low-power options like NB-IoT handle slow trickles of data from simple sensors. Many devices fall in the middle. Smart utility meters, industrial sensors, fleet trackers, payment terminals, building systems, and some wearables need steady coverage and long battery life, not top speed. The technology targets that middle band. It runs on a 5G Standalone network, meaning a 5G core rather than one leaning on 4G underneath.

RedCap battery life is already improved on standard 5G. RedCap pushes it further. Because peak data rates stay low and the channel is narrow, a device can run 5 to 10 years on one battery, against 1 to 3 years for RedCap. That figure sits close to the low-power radio technologies many meters use today. On cost, coverage, and battery life, eRedCap matches LTE Cat-1 and Cat-1bis. That makes it an LTE Cat-1 replacement built for 5G, which matters as operators plan to switch off LTE and reclaim that spectrum.

What it means for enterprises

The step builds on earlier work. In 2024, e& UAE became the first operator in the Middle East and Africa to bring Ericsson’s 5G Standalone RedCap into a commercial network. eRedCap extends that effort to an even lower cost and power tier.

Abdulrahman Al Humaidan, Senior Vice President, Access Network Development at e& UAE, said eRedCap brings everyday IoT applications into the 5G era at the right cost, power, and coverage. He said proving the capability on a live commercial network gives utilities, manufacturers, logistics providers, and smart-city operators a credible path to scale connected devices and prepare for the shift beyond LTE. e& UAE’s eRedCap live network test points beyond a single demo.

The practical gain is fewer parallel networks to run. Firms can move more IoT use cases onto 5G Standalone instead of keeping separate paths for high-performance 5G and LTE-based devices. That can simplify how devices are managed over their lifetime and tighten security across large fleets. It also supports the long-term reuse of LTE spectrum, since not every device would need full 5G hardware to make the move. The eRedCap live network test gives that transition an early proof point on a working network.

  • 3 min read
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