BRIDGE Summit 2025 Explores Investment Strategies To Drive Innovation And Progress

At the BRIDGE Summit 2025, leaders from both public and private sectors engaged in a lively discussion on value creation and strategic risk-taking. The event highlighted how capital is being directed towards the world's most innovative regions. Khalfan Belhoul, CEO of Dubai Future Foundation, and Dr. Ling Ge, Chief Investment and Strategy Officer EMEA at Tencent, participated in a dialogue titled ‘Mobilising Capital for a Future Media Ecosystem’. Rachel Maycock, Managing Partner at Place Advisory & Public Affairs, moderated the session.

Despite their different backgrounds, both speakers agreed on key principles: continuous experimentation, resilience through challenges, and supporting ventures that address significant issues. Dr. Ge highlighted Tencent's investment strategy, focusing on companies with strong technical foundations and collaborative ecosystems. "Tencent is a company with a big pool of talent, engineers and scientists, so we try to use our domain expertise to help identify companies with the strongest technical modes, the companies that can't be replicated easily," she said.

Khalfan Belhoul discussed the UAE’s unique environment for innovation. He emphasised Dubai Future Foundation’s role in fostering experimentation. "His Highness told us when the foundation was formed, ‘you are Dubai’s lab’," he said. "This gave us the comfort to really test and try out new ideas." In the UAE, failure is seen as a learning opportunity rather than a setback. "If you have leaders that are willing to empower testing, making mistakes, failing, and learning, you know that the failing component is not necessarily looked at as failure."

The speakers identified agile regulation and innovative funding as reasons for the UAE's emergence as a dynamic investment hub. A digitally savvy population also contributes to this growth. Dr. Ge described this synergy as a "flywheel of innovation," where talent, capital, and regulatory openness strengthen each other.

The conversation also touched on AI's disruptive momentum but stressed that future systems will integrate human skills with machine intelligence. Both speakers believe this combination will unlock national "cognitive potential," shaping future competitiveness and influencing global capital flows.

They concluded that these conditions are accelerating a shift in investment patterns. Capital is increasingly moving from traditional centres to agile hubs like the UAE — places where innovation is structurally supported.

This session was part of over 300 sessions reflecting BRIDGE Summit’s ambition. The inaugural BRIDGE Summit will be held from 8–10 December 2025 at ADNEC in Abu Dhabi.

With inputs from WAM