Inception

What Inception does

Inception is an Abu Dhabi-based AI company and a wholly-owned subsidiary of G42, the UAE AI technology group operating in over 30 countries. Founded in 2018 and employing 101–250 people, the company builds AI-native agentic products and bilingual large language models for governments and large enterprises in regulated industries including financial services, energy, healthcare, and telecommunications. Its go-to-market is enterprise field sales targeting sovereign deployments, with strategic channel partners including McKinsey, AppliedAI, Brain Co., and Kore.ai.

The company's product portfolio centers on the Catalyst agentic platform, with vertical applications including Insight (executive decision intelligence), Alpha (investment decision-making), InceptionClaw (AI super assistant), and the (In)Government suite (Procurement and Human Capital modules). Underpinning these applications is a family of proprietary bilingual large language models — Jais for Arabic (a 32-model portfolio with 33% Arabic training data, 8B and 70B variants), Nanda 87B for Hindi-English (trained on 65B+ Hindi tokens), and SHERKALA 8B for Kazakh — developed with MBZUAI and trained on Cerebras wafer-scale hardware and the G42 Intelligence Grid.

Inception generates revenue through enterprise AI solution subscriptions, platform licensing (notably Catalyst), and co-development engagements with large enterprises and system integrators. Pricing is quote-based and not publicly disclosed. Named customers include Abu Dhabi's Department of Government Enablement, Banco Santander, Worley, and Tajikistan's Ministry of Industry and New Technologies, with additional technology alliances spanning Microsoft, NVIDIA, Dell, AMD, Cerebras, AIQ, Kore.ai, and AppliedAI. The strategic focus on sovereign AI and underserved-language localization positions Inception as the applied intelligence arm of the broader G42 ecosystem.

Name

Inception

Legal name

Inception

Website

https://inceptionai.ai

Company type

Private

Founded year

2018

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

101–250 employees

Short description

Inception is an Abu Dhabi-based AI company and G42 subsidiary that builds sovereign, agentic AI products and bilingual large language models (Jais for Arabic, Nanda for Hindi, SHERKALA for Kazakh) for governments and large enterprises in financial services, energy, healthcare, and telecom.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Enterprise AI Software Platform

NAICS

Software Publishers (5132), Computer Systems Design and Related Services (5415), Computer Systems Design Services (541512)

SIC

Services-Prepackaged Software (7372), Services-Computer Programming, Data Processing, Etc. (7370)

akta.pro primary industry

Agents & Autonomous Workflows (Tool Use, Planning, Multi-Agent) (HDAAACAF)

akta.pro secondary industries

Open-Source Model Ecosystems & Model Marketplaces (HDAAACAM), Model Serving, Inference & Deployment Platforms (APIs, Edge/On-Prem) (HDAEANAC), Enterprise Foundation Model Integration & APIs (Connectors, Governance, Deployment) (HDAAACAO)

Keywords

• Agentic AI platform
• Sovereign AI deployment
• Bilingual language models
• Enterprise AI software
• Government AI solutions

Headquarters

HQ city

Abu Dhabi

HQ country

United Arab Emirates

HQ region

Middle East

Offices2 records

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Technology or R&D, Personnel, Infrastructure, Marketing or Sales, Operations

Revenue model

1. Enterprise AI Solutions: Revenue generated from deploying AI-native agentic products and solutions to government and enterprise clients. Includes implementation, customization, and ongoing support services for sovereign AI deployments.
2. Platform Licensing: Licensing of the Catalyst agentic platform and workflow automation technology to enterprises for intelligent, agent-driven operations across regulated industries.
3. Co-development Projects: Strategic co-development partnerships with enterprises (e.g., Banco Santander) to build AI-powered solutions, potentially including implementation fees and ongoing licensing.

Go-to-market motion2 records

Distribution channels4 records

Marketing channels6 records

Core offering

Inception develops and deploys AI-native agentic products and bilingual large language models for sovereign enterprise and government use. Its core offerings include the Catalyst agentic platform, Insight (executive decision intelligence), Alpha (investment decision-making), InceptionClaw (AI super assistant), and proprietary LLMs Jais (Arabic), Nanda (Hindi), and Sherkala (Kazakh). The (In)Government product suite extends these capabilities to public-sector operations. All offerings are designed for sovereign deployment with full control over data, governance, and security, leveraging the G42 Intelligence Grid and Cerebras wafer-scale compute.

Product overview

Inception offers a portfolio of AI-native agentic products and solutions organized as an intelligence fabric. The core product portfolio includes Catalyst as the foundational agentic platform, Insight for executive decision intelligence, Alpha for investment decision-making, and InceptionClaw as an AI super assistant. Additionally, Inception provides bilingual large language models including Jais for Arabic (32-model family with 33% Arabic training data), Nanda for Hindi-English, and SHERKALA for Kazakh. The (In)Government product suite extends these capabilities specifically for government operations. All products are designed for sovereign deployment with full control over data, governance, and security, as part of the G42 Intelligence Grid.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• InceptionClaw: AI super assistant product for enterprise use
• Alpha
• Insight
• Procure
• Talent
• Catalyst
• Jais
• Nanda
• Sherkala

Products and services

• Insight Executive Decision Intelligence platform enabling leaders to operate with certainty, act decisively, and deliver outcomes at national and enterprise scale.
• Alpha AI-powered investment decision-making solution that transforms how organizations evaluate and make investment choices.
• Catalyst Agentic platform serving as the foundational platform enabling all AI solutions, providing orchestration for agent-driven enterprise operations.
• InceptionClaw AI super assistant providing intelligent assistance for enterprise and government users, enabling management of multiple AI agents simultaneously.
• Jais Bilingual Arabic-English Large Language Model built for Arabic language, history, and culture. Part of a 32-model family with 33% Arabic training data.
• Nanda Open-source Hindi-English bilingual language model, with Nanda 87B being the latest version built on Meta's Llama-3.1 and trained on over 65 billion Hindi tokens.
• Sherkala 8-billion-parameter Large Language Model designed for Kazakh speakers, trained on 45 billion words with 25% tokenizer expansion for efficient Kazakh processing.
• (In)Government Product Suite AI-native government solution suite deployed across core government operations with dedicated Procure and Talent pillars for Procurement and Human Capital management, supporting Abu Dhabi's AI-native government vision by 2027.

Quantifiable outcome

• 25 AI use cases enabled in Procurement pillar
• +3 more outcomes

Named customers4 records

Segments5 records

Ideal customer profiles4 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

AI capability12 records

Feature9 records

Partnerships

13 partnerships are on record, tiered core and flagship.

• Banco SantandercoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 6 June 2026G42 and Banco Santander signed a memorandum of understanding to explore strategic cooperation in artificial intelligence. The agreement establishes a framework for co-developing AI-powered advisory and savings solutions for customers, alongside a banking intelligence layer to support Santander's global operations. Two G42 subsidiaries—Inception and Presight—play central roles in this collaboration to expand agentic AI within financial services.
• Dell Technologies and NVIDIAcoreTechnology or Integration · 3 June 2026Dell Technologies and NVIDIA partnered with Inception to showcase AI-powered solutions at EAGE 2026 for the oil and gas industry, including physics-informed AI for seismic imaging, reservoir simulation agents, vision AI for safety monitoring, and agentic AI for upstream operations. Inception AI participates as an ecosystem partner in the Dell AI Factory with NVIDIA.
• Department of Government Enablement (DGE) - Abu DhabiflagshipStrategic or Co-development Partner · 10 February 2026DGE and Inception partnered to advance Abu Dhabi's goal of becoming the world's first AI-native government by 2027, deploying the (In)Government product suite across core government operations. The initial phase focuses on Procurement (~25 AI use cases) and Human Capital (at least 10 AI use cases) pillars, part of DGE's pipeline of over 200 identified AI use cases. The collaboration implements a domain rewiring approach.
• Tajikistan Ministry of Industry and New TechnologiescoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 9 February 2026Inception signed a strategic partnership with Tajikistan's Ministry of Industry and New Technologies and Dubai-based synthetic data company zypl.ai to advance AI solutions under Tajikistan's national AI-GOV initiative. The MOU establishes a framework for cooperation to accelerate responsible AI adoption in the public sector and support implementation of Tajikistan's National AI Strategy 2040.
• AppliedAIcoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 21 January 2026Inception formed a strategic partnership with AppliedAI, creator of the Opus workflow platform, to build a unified AI-powered enterprise workflow platform. The platform combines AppliedAI's AI-native workflow automation technology with Inception's expertise in deploying AI solutions at enterprise and national scale to accelerate intelligent, agent-driven operations across regulated industries.
• Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI)coreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 16 December 2025G42, in collaboration with MBZUAI and Inception, released Nanda 87B, an upgraded open-source Hindi-English language model built on Meta's Llama-3.1 and trained on over 65 billion Hindi tokens, targeting India's large Hindi-speaking population.
• CerebrascoreTechnology or Integration · 10 December 2025Cerebras partnered with G42's Inception and MBZUAI's Institute for Futures Mapping to release Jais 2, the world's leading open Arabic LLM. It was the first frontier-grade language model both trained end-to-end and deployed for inference on Cerebras wafer-scale hardware, achieving up to 2,000 tokens per second inference speed.
• Brain Co.coreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 14 October 2025Inception and Brain Co., a Silicon Valley AI company, formed a strategic partnership at GITEX Global 2025 to co-develop next-generation AI products and solutions for enterprises in sectors such as public services, healthcare, and energy. The collaboration combines Inception's applied research and product innovation capabilities with Brain Co.'s AI platform.
• Kore.aicoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 15 April 2025Kore.ai partnered with Inception to co-develop and deploy AI-native enterprise applications targeting businesses in the UAE and the Global South. The collaboration combines Inception's AI product expertise with Kore.ai's conversational and GenAI technology platform and global distribution network for enterprise functions including Procurement, Investment, and AI for Service.
• Cerebras and MBZUAI (for Sherkala)coreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 6 March 2025Inception, in partnership with MBZUAI and Cerebras, launched SHERKALA, an 8-billion-parameter Large Language Model for Kazakh speakers. Trained on 45 billion words with 25% tokenizer expansion, it leverages the Condor Galaxy supercomputer and is the best-performing open-source Kazakh-focused model of its size.
• McKinsey & CompanycoreImplementation/ SI/ Consulting PartnerA strategic partnership aimed at enhancing board and executive effectiveness through the power of AI, leveraging McKinsey's consulting expertise and Inception's AI products.
• AIQcoreTechnology or IntegrationThe partnership leverages AIQ's proven success in applying AI to optimize Energy operations with Inception's cutting-edge capabilities in agentic AI, generative AI, and machine learning.
• G42flagshipOthersInception is a G42 company and the intelligence layer of the G42 Intelligence Grid. G42 is an Abu Dhabi-based AI technology group operating in over 30 countries, providing AI infrastructure, cloud platforms, data centers, and applied intelligence solutions through its group companies including Inception.

Scale indicators8 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights6 records

Direct peers

• AI21 Labs: Israel-based enterprise AI company building sovereign-grade foundation models (Jamba) with strong Arabic-NLP heritage. Most directly comparable peer given overlapping Arabic LLM focus, enterprise go-to-market, and emphasis on deployable proprietary models rather than consumer chatbots.
• Cohere: Enterprise-focused foundation model provider (Command, Embed, Rerank) with explicit focus on private and sovereign deployments for regulated industries. Comparable in target customer profile (regulated enterprises, governments), deployment model (private/on-prem), and product positioning around enterprise-grade LLMs rather than consumer.
• Aleph Alpha: German sovereign AI provider offering Pharia AI for enterprises and public sector with strong emphasis on European data sovereignty and compliance. Comparable as a non-US/non-Chinese sovereign AI alternative targeting regulated buyers with multilingual capability and on-prem deployment.

Broad incumbents

• ServiceNow: Enterprise workflow automation platform with Now Assist AI agents and government vertical. Comparable in targeting enterprise/government workflow automation with AI agents — directly adjacent to Inception's Catalyst platform and the AppliedAI Opus partnership — but as a much larger established incumbent with broad ITSM/ESM portfolio.
• Palantir Technologies: US-based enterprise AI/decision intelligence platform (Foundry, AIP) widely deployed across government and regulated industries. Comparable in targeting national-scale government deployments with sovereign-by-design architecture and executive decision intelligence, but operates as a much larger established incumbent with broader portfolio.
• OpenAI: Frontier model provider with ChatGPT Enterprise, government deployments, and a partner ecosystem including Microsoft Azure for sovereign cloud. Comparable in targeting large enterprises and governments with agentic AI products, but offers general-purpose models rather than regional-language specialized ones.
• G42 Presight: Sister G42 company focused on applied AI for government, financial services, and smart cities across the UAE and international markets. Comparable as a G42-internal peer operating in adjacent sovereign AI deployment territory, often partnering with Inception (e.g., on the Santander MoU) but competing for similar enterprise/government budget.
• Anthropic: Frontier AI lab with enterprise (Claude for Enterprise) and government offerings, including partnerships for sovereign deployments. Comparable in enterprise agentic AI positioning (Claude's tool-use and agent capabilities align with Inception's Catalyst platform), but operates at significantly larger scale and with US data center footprint.

Others

• Hugging Face: Open-source AI model hub hosting Jais, Nanda, Sherkala and similar regional LLMs. Not a direct competitor but a key distribution and ecosystem channel for Inception's open-source models and an adjacent infrastructure provider enabling enterprise fine-tuning and deployment of sovereign LLMs.

Emerging players

• SambaNova Systems: Enterprise AI infrastructure provider with custom RDU chips enabling high-throughput private LLM deployment. Comparable as an alternative sovereign/private deployment infrastructure partner competing with Cerebras (Inception's current partner), and as an emerging enterprise AI platform with government interest.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat6 records

Key risks5 records

Key highlights6 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/Inception_42
• YouTubeyoutube.com/@inception42-ai
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/inception-42-company
• Instagraminstagram.com/inception_42

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles2 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Inception