Dubai’s Business Year in Review: What Opened and What Changed in 2025

At One Central in October 2025, Dubai Founders HQ opened a campus for entrepreneurs. The following day, Oracle announced the opening of a customer experience centre at Dubai Internet City. In December, DHL opened an expanded logistics innovation centre in Dubai South. Each gave businesses a different reason to visit a physical space: finding support for a startup, seeing how enterprise technology might work, or exploring ways to improve logistics operations.

The year also brought growth in Dubai Chamber of Commerce membership and in the value of exports and re-exports reported for its members. The annual figures and the openings describe different kinds of change. One shows the scale of activity within the Chamber’s reporting scope. The other shows what was delivered at specific locations. This review uses 2025 as the latest complete calendar year and compares it with the same period in 2024.

The Chamber’s figures show growth across several measures

Dubai Chambers’ 2025 annual report records a 15.1% increase in the value of members’ exports and re-exports, from AED 309.6 billion to AED 356.5 billion. The measure includes re-exports and covers Chamber members. It answers a question about trade within that reporting scope. It cannot be read as the value of all Dubai trade or as evidence that the quantity of goods increased by the same percentage. The values are in dirhams, and the annual comparison does not by itself explain the relative effect of prices, volumes or the mix of shipments. Dubai Chambers annual reports for 2024 and 2025.

The membership figures are also worth reading in pairs. Dubai Chamber of Commerce counted 292,486 active members at the end of 2025, compared with 258,318 at the end of 2024. That is a 13.2% increase. During 2025, 71,830 companies joined, up from 70,500 during 2024. The first measure is a year-end snapshot and the second counts companies joining over the year. The number joining therefore cannot be added to the previous year’s active count to produce the next active count. It also gives no direct count of company incorporations in Dubai. Dubai Chamber of Commerce’s January 2026 results release.

Documentation volumes give another view of the Chamber’s work. It issued more certificates of origin, and the number of ATA Carnets it issued and received also rose. The latter count concerns documents used for temporary movement of goods. Think of a company taking demonstration equipment to an overseas exhibition and bringing it back afterwards. That journey requires different arrangements from permanently selling the equipment in another country. The documentation totals give a measure of service activity. They do not tell us how many distinct companies used the services or how many made a sale. Dubai Chamber of Commerce service descriptions.

Dubai Founders HQ opened a base at One Central

Dubai’s government announced the launch of Dubai Founders HQ on 6 October 2025. The Department of Economy and Tourism and Dubai Chamber of Digital Economy developed it as a joint initiative. The campus is inside the 25hours Hotel at One Central by Dubai World Trade Centre, with a digital platform alongside it. The opening gave founders a named place to look for support and gave programme organisers a place to bring founders, investors and business partners together. DET’s Dubai Founders HQ launch announcement and Dubai Founders HQ news and events.

The distinction between a campus and a programme matters when a founder decides how to use it. An early team looking for feedback may need to find a session with people who understand its customers. A company preparing to sell to larger buyers may want introductions or help working through requirements for an enterprise pilot. Both can begin with the same platform. The relevant opportunity still has its own dates, eligibility and selection process.

What 2025 delivered was the launch of the campus and its platform. Later programme activity belongs on its own timeline. For example, DET announced the multi-year collaboration with Antler in February 2026. It helps show how the campus could house or support a more specialised founder programme, while the date makes clear why the partnership is outside the 2025 tally. Today, Dubai Founders HQ has a membership application, and the operator says places are limited. An applicant should distinguish membership from a place on a specific programme. DET’s February 2026 Antler partnership announcement and Dubai Founders HQ membership application.

Oracle opened a customer experience centre at Dubai Internet City

On 7 October 2025, Dubai Internet City and its parent TECOM Group reported that Oracle had opened an AI-focused Customer Experience Centre in the district. The announcement describes it as a place to demonstrate technologies and train customers using Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and Fusion Cloud Applications. The stated purpose is to let organisations see applications and consider how they could use them in their own work. The centre opening adds a place for customer engagement to Oracle’s existing Dubai presence. TECOM Group’s Oracle centre opening report.

For a company evaluating enterprise software, a demonstration space can help different people see the same workflow. An operations lead might want to see which steps can be automated. The finance team may care about which controls remain in place. A technology team will want to know what connects to its own systems. A session that puts those questions against the same scenario can make the discussion more precise before anyone commits to a wider project.

A demonstration and deployment involve different decisions. The opening evidence establishes the centre, its technology focus and its stated purpose. It does not establish that a given customer deployed a product, how much a project would cost, or what results the company achieved. Anyone interested in discussing a demonstration or an implementation should go through Oracle’s UAE contact route and ask what is available for their team. Existing customers also have support routes that serve a different purpose from visiting the centre. Oracle UAE contacts.

DHL opened an expanded innovation centre in Dubai South

DHL Group’s release dated 4 December 2025 says it officially opened its expanded Middle East and Africa Innovation Center in Dubai South. DHL describes it as one of its regional spaces for bringing customers and partners into contact with logistics technology. The district’s own 2025 review also lists the centre among the facilities inaugurated that year. The company’s later UAE account confirms the opening took place in December. DHL Group’s December 2025 release and Dubai South’s 2025 review.

The same DHL announcement discusses a separate multi-user warehouse investment in Dubai South. The centre opened. The warehouse was described as a facility to be built under a new agreement. That difference is easy to miss when two projects share one headline or announcement. A place where a logistics customer can discuss technology and a warehouse that will eventually handle goods add different capabilities. Count the centre in the year’s openings and track the warehouse against its own construction and operating milestones. DHL’s UAE follow-up on both investments.

For a retailer or manufacturer, the practical question is what part of its logistics operation it wants to improve. A company that struggles to locate stock in a busy warehouse has a different problem from one that knows exactly where stock sits but cannot process orders quickly enough during a promotion. A discussion about technology becomes more useful when the company can describe the process, who owns it and what has to happen when the system fails. The centre provides a place to discuss possibilities. The December release does not show which technologies any particular customer installed or what they achieved.

Dubai South’s own figures show how one district changed

Dubai South reported welcoming 653 new companies in 2025, compared with 415 in 2024. It put the number of operating businesses at more than 4,200 in 2025, against 4,044 a year earlier. Its reported retention rate moved from 94% in 2024 to 90% in 2025. The three figures add detail to a headline about more companies arriving. New entrants increased, and the district reported a lower share of existing companies retained. Both changes can happen in the same year. Dubai South’s 2024 review and Dubai South’s 2025 review.

There are two reasons to keep these figures beside the Chamber’s data rather than combining them. Dubai South reports on companies in its development, while the Chamber reports on its members. The same company may appear in both groups. And because Dubai South gives its 2025 operating-business total as more than 4,200, there is no exact year-on-year percentage to calculate from the published number. For a company considering a base in the district, the report gives a starting point for asking what kinds of firms operate there and which services are already available. The DHL opening gives one specific answer about logistics capability. The district-wide totals describe the broader setting in which it opened.

How to read the year’s milestones together

The Chamber figures offer a year-to-year comparison. The three openings offer examples of capabilities made available at named sites. The sources do not establish that any of those projects caused the year’s trade or membership increase. The calendar itself makes that hard to infer. Two of the facilities opened in October and the third in December, while the annual figures cover activity across all twelve months.

They can still be compared in a useful way. Dubai Founders HQ is a place to look for the right person or programme when building a company. Oracle’s centre is designed for customers trying to understand an enterprise technology before using it. DHL’s centre gives logistics teams a setting to explore how a different process might work. In each case, the opening creates a point of contact. What happens after that depends on how founders, customers and partners use it.

A business following Dubai into the next annual cycle can track several things separately. For a programme, look for published criteria and evidence that cohorts actually took place. For a technology centre, look for what customers can test and whether the operator documents examples that have progressed beyond a demonstration. For a logistics project, distinguish the agreement, the completed facility and the start of the service. Those milestones can be months or years apart. Recording the date and the action each source confirms helps preserve the difference when another announcement arrives.

For annual comparisons, also keep the publication date separate from the reporting period. The Chamber’s January 2026 release records activity through December 2025. A project announced in January would belong in the following year even if it appeared beside those results in the same news feed.

The clearest reading of 2025 is that Chamber members recorded higher export and re-export value than in 2024, the Chamber ended the year with more active members, and entrepreneurs and enterprise customers gained three specific places to explore opportunities or technology. Future annual reports can show how the comparable measures moved again. Separate operating evidence will show what those sites went on to deliver.