1001 AI Raises $9 Million For Critical Industry AI Projects

Artificial intelligence (AI) firm 1001 AI has raised $9 million in seed funding.

That funding, announced Monday (Oct. 20), will allow the company to further its mission of developing AI infrastructure for critical industries such as aviation and oil and gas in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).

“Just looking at the top three or four industries like airports, ports, construction, and oil and gas, we see more than $10 billion in inefficiencies across the Gulf alone,” Bilal Abu-Ghazaleh, the company’s founder and CEO, said in an interview with TechCrunch.

“That’s just in markets like the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar. Even without counting other sectors, these industries represent a massive opportunity.”

Abu-Ghazaleh, a veteran of firms like Scale AI, told the website his two-month old company targets inefficiencies in places like airports and construction sites. He noted that 90% of the region’s mega-projects run behind schedule or go over budget, meaning even small improvements in efficiencies can lead to larger savings.

1001 AI is aiming to sell its decision-making AI to new projects after it introduces its first product, which is due by the end of the year. The startup is in discussions with some of the Gulf region’s biggest construction firms and airports, said Abu-Ghazaleh.

In other AI news, recent research by PYMNTS Intelligence shows that while younger users may be more eager than their older counterparts about the technology, they’re still approaching it with some measure of ambivalence.

The latest PYMNTS Intelligence report, “Generation AI: Why Gen Z Bets Big and Boomers Hold Back,” indicates that Americans’ comfort with AI is less about familiarity and more about faith in the technology, in the data behind it and in the institutions using it.

That research found  that 57% of U.S. adults — or around 149 million consumers — are turning to generative AI tools for everything from grocery lists to work reports.

Millennials and Gen Z are out in front, with boomers still skeptical, primarily due to privacy and reliability concerns. One thing all generations have in common is unease, with consumers across age brackets trying to balance the technology’s usefulness with its potential for harm. Almost two-thirds of users say gen AI is helpful for letting them gain quick access to information, yet more than half admit they don’t entirely trust it.

“That tension — between utility and uncertainty — may prove to be the defining feature of America’s AI adoption curve,” PYMNTS wrote Monday.

Even as companies deploy generative tools for customer service, content creation and market research, consumers remain wary of what’s happening behind the algorithmic curtain.”

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