Abu Dhabi's Technology Innovation Institute (TII) releases Falcon 2 series: Falcon 2 11B, a text model, and Falcon 2 11B VLM, a vision-to-language model. The UAE invests heavily in AI, drawing attention from the US. G42, an Emirati AI firm, divests from Chinese tech, secures $1.5B from Microsoft. TII aims to rival big tech with open-source GenAI. Plans for Falcon 3 underway.