Meet the young Emirati woman making waves in Silicon Valley

Maryam Al Abbar is a young Emirati entrepreneur who has made a name for herself in Silicon Valley. She runs two successful start-ups: Carbon2Capital, an AI-driven carbon footprint calculation firm, and ReachLLM, an AI platform that helps businesses enhance their visibility across large language models. Ms Al Abbar attributes her success to her background as an Emirati woman and the advice she received from her mother.

Her mother gave her a two-year timeline to figure out her future, after which she should consider getting a job. Al Abbar's journey into entrepreneurship started before she graduated from Zayed University in Dubai, where she met her co-founders through the Bloomberg Challenge, an investment competition. They eventually founded Carbon2Capital, which took the team through several start-up programs, including Dubai SME.

Their work then led them to the UK for an international start-up program. It was during this period that they shifted their focus to ReachLLM. Moving to Silicon Valley, the team was accepted into Founders Inc., and their annual recurring revenue grew sharply, exceeding their expectations. However, the experience also taught Al Abbar to be comfortable in rooms where she was the only Emirati woman.

Despite being underestimated as a young female founder, she remains determined and aims to break the barrier of creating a billion-dollar technology company that can compete internationally. She encourages other young Emirati women to have the audacity to dare and try new things.