Applied AI Engineer

IHC pursues 80% stake in Marlan Holding. Sun 13 Sep 2026 · AP News Abu Dhabi's International Holding Company is moving to acquire an 80 per cent stake in Marlan Holding, giving the investment group a controlling position in the company behind UAE-based Marlan Space. The proposed transaction is being carried out through IHC's wholly owned subsidiary International Tech Group SP LLC and remains subject to regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions, the company said. Financial terms were not disclosed. Marlan Holding RSC Ltd is the holding company behind Marlan Space, an Abu Dhabi-based investor-operator focused on space and space-related businesses and technologies. Its portfolio spans space systems, autonomous operations and advanced computing, placing the planned acquisition within IHC's wider push into deep technology and the expanding commercial space economy. IHC said the deal would provide a platform for investment and growth across satellite infrastructure, advanced manufacturing and emerging space technologies. The group also expects potential collaboration between Marlan Space and other businesses across its portfolio in areas such as technology, data and infrastructure where satellite capabilities can support commercial applications. "This acquisition gives IHC a strategic position in the new space economy and provides Marlan Space with access to the Group's capital, capabilities and Dynamic Value Networks to accelerate its next phase of growth," IHC chief executive Syed Basar Shueb said in the company's announcement. He said space was becoming an increasingly important part of the global technology and infrastructure landscape, with applications extending across communications, Earth observation, data and artificial intelligence. A central asset within Marlan Space is Orbitworks, an Abu Dhabi-based private space infrastructure company established as a joint venture with US-based Loft Orbital. Orbitworks was formed to manufacture commercial satellites at scale and operates from a purpose-built facility in Khalifa Economic Zones Abu Dhabi. The facility is designed to support the production of Earth observation, communications and other spacecraft, together with specialised payloads, giving Marlan Space an operating presence in satellite manufacturing as well as investment exposure to the sector. Marlan Space's flagship Altair programme is an artificial intelligence-enabled Earth observation constellation combining optical, hyperspectral, thermal, infrared and passive radio-frequency payloads with onboard processing. IHC said the first satellite has been completed and further satellites are being assembled in Abu Dhabi. The system is intended to bring together multiple sensors and computing capability in orbit, allowing data to be processed closer to where it is collected and supporting faster delivery of information to users across commercial and public-sector applications. The acquisition announcement was followed a day later by plans involving Marlan Space, Loft Orbital, French artificial intelligence company Mistral AI and other partners to develop what the companies described as a large-scale artificial intelligence infrastructure in space. IHC said that programme would involve investment of up to $1 billion and would use a planned satellite constellation to run artificial intelligence models in orbit. The project, known as Altair-Next Gen, is intended to combine satellite infrastructure with onboard computing so data can be analysed in space rather than relying entirely on transmission to ground stations before processing. Initial applications identified by the companies include maritime awareness, wildfire detection, disaster response and protection of ports and critical infrastructure. Orbitworks is expected to manufacture satellites for the programme at its Abu Dhabi facility. The planned constellation is designed to scale from 10 satellites to 50, according to the companies, with the larger deployment intended to provide more continuous observation and faster alerts. Marlan Space chief executive Hamdullah Mohib said the company's strategy was based on moving more intelligence into orbit and building that capability from the UAE. He also serves as chief executive of Orbitworks. For IHC, the proposed majority purchase would add another technology-focused platform to a portfolio that spans more than 1,300 subsidiaries and investments across sectors including financial services, energy, property, healthcare and technology. Follow Arabian Post. 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Cloudera and Mistral partner to bring specialised, sovereign Intelligence to enterprise data. Cloudera | Published 11 Sept 2026 Collaboration brings Mistral's frontier models and capabilities directly to Cloudera customers' governed data, giving enterprises greater control, choice, and flexibility to build and deploy private AI anywhere Cloudera, the only company bringing AI to data anywhere, and Mistral, a global frontier AI lab, today announced a landmark strategic partnership to bring secure, sovereign AI directly to enterprise data wherever it resides. Cloudera and Mistral will combine Cloudera's hybrid data and AI platform with Mistral's sovereign AI models to give enterprises a secure path to build, customise, and run AI using their own private data. The collaboration will enable organisations to bring intelligence directly to their data across cloud, on-premises, edge, sovereign, and air-gapped environments - without requiring sensitive information to leave their control. For enterprises managing the world's largest and most sensitive data estates, this approach provides greater control, choice, and flexibility over how and where AI runs. Organisations can run inference privately, customise AI using proprietary data, and deploy AI applications within their existing security and governance boundaries, while gaining greater control over the economics of AI at scale. "Enterprise AI is entering a new phase where organisations need more than access to powerful models, they need the freedom to unlock specialised intelligence using their data, on their terms," said Abhas Ricky, Chief Business Officer & GM, Applied AI at Cloudera. "Together with Mistral, we are giving enterprises the ability to run AI where their data lives, customise it with their own intellectual property, and maintain control over their data, infrastructure, and economics. That combination of intelligence and control is essential to moving AI from experimentation into production." Keir Garrett, Managing Director for Cloudera Australia and New Zealand, adds, "As Australian organisations use AI to generate insights, automate decisions, and capture institutional knowledge, the intelligence created from enterprise data is becoming a core strategic asset in its own right. As a result, maintaining control of that intelligence has become just as important as maintaining control over the data itself. Our partnership with Mistral helps organisations keep both their data and their AI within a trusted, governed environment - giving them greater control over how AI is deployed, the intelligence it creates, and the economics of scaling it. As expectations around resilience, transparency and accountability continue to grow, that control is becoming increasingly critical." Bringing Intelligence to the Data For enterprises operating in highly regulated and data-intensive industries, moving sensitive or proprietary information to external AI services can introduce regulatory, security, and operational challenges. Cloudera and Mistral are addressing these challenges by bringing secure, sovereign AI directly to the enterprise data perimeter. Mistral's suite of frontier models and tools will be integrated with Cloudera's hybrid data and AI platform, enabling customers to run their own custom AI models and applications across 30 exabytes of data. Enterprises will have the deployment flexibility across public, private, on-premises, and fully air-gapped environments, while maintaining consistent governance and control over their context. The partnership will span Mistral's broad portfolio of frontier AI models and tools, including reasoning, chat, coding, document intelligence, and voice, giving Cloudera customers greater choice in how they apply AI to their enterprise data. By enabling organisations to run inference within their own environments, the collaboration also gives customers greater flexibility over the economics of AI. Enterprises can choose the deployment model and infrastructure that best fit their workloads rather than depending exclusively on public API consumption models as AI usage scales. From Private Inference to Proprietary Intelligence Through the integration of Mistral Forge, a system for enterprises to build frontier-grade AI models grounded in their proprietary knowledge, organisations utilising Cloudera's platform will be able to customise and train models against large volumes of private enterprise data within controlled environments. For enterprises with petabytes of proprietary information, this creates an opportunity to transform decades of institutional data and domain expertise into differentiated AI while maintaining ownership and sovereignty over both the data and resulting intelligence. Developers and practitioners will also be able to securely build AI-powered experiences using private enterprise data within local environments - from conversational access to governed data to AI-assisted software development and agentic workflows - without exposing sensitive business context or intellectual property to external environments. Cloudera and Mistral also intend to collaborate on the next generation of AI at the edge, bringing increasingly capable inference closer to where enterprise data is created. This will enable organisations to explore intelligent applications across disconnected, latency-sensitive and resource-constrained environments where relying on centralised cloud infrastructure is not practical. "Our mission is to make frontier AI available to enterprises without requiring them to give up control over their data, infrastructure, or intellectual property," said Kamal Brar, SVP of Partnerships and Alliances at Mistral. "Cloudera manages some of the world's most valuable enterprise data estates, making this partnership a powerful opportunity to bring our technology directly to where that data lives. Together, we can give customers the ability to build AI that reflects their own data and expertise and deploy it securely wherever their business requires." Expanding Choice for Enterprise AI The partnership also expands the Cloudera Enterprise AI Ecosystem, through which Cloudera works with leading AI models, infrastructure, application, and technology providers to give customers flexibility in how they build and deploy enterprise AI. Mistral adds a significant new dimension to that ecosystem by enabling customers to access and customise its models and AI capabilities directly alongside their governed enterprise data. The partnership reinforces both Cloudera's and Mistral's commitment to an open approach to enterprise AI, giving customers choice across models, infrastructure, and deployment environments rather than locking their data or AI strategy into a single technology stack. The joint Cloudera and Mistral solutions will be available through Cloudera's enterprise sales team and partner ecosystem, with additional integrations and capabilities rolling out over time. To learn more, visit Cloudera.com. About Cloudera Cloudera is the only hybrid data and AI platform company that large organisations trust to bring AI to their data anywhere it lives. Unlike other providers, Cloudera delivers a consistent cloud experience that converges public clouds, on-prem data centres, sovereign clouds, and the edge, leveraging a proven open-source foundation. As the pioneer in big data, Cloudera empowers businesses to apply AI and assert control over 100% of their data, in all forms, improving security, governance, and real-time and predictive insights. The world's largest brands across all industries rely on Cloudera to transform decision-making and ultimately boost bottom lines, safeguard against threats, and save lives. To learn more, visit Cloudera.com and follow us on LinkedIn and X. (C) 2026 Cloudera and associated marks are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cloudera, Inc. All other company and product names are trademarks of their respective owners. About Mistral Mistral is a global AI lab building state-of-the-art open-weight models, products and infrastructure that enable enterprises, public institutions and advanced industries to truly own, customise, and control their AI. Headquartered in France, Mistral has a strong international presence across Europe, North America and Asia.