Laiwyer.ai - Qatar’s first 100% Qatari-owned, Meta-accelerated entity - is in talks with Qatar Development Bank (QDB) and other institutions, as it plans to expand artificial intelligence (AI) powered legal research across the Gulf and into the wider Middle East and North Africa (Mena) jurisdictions.

The AI-based legal research platform - which reduces research time by up to 80% and provides direct access to legal primary sources, allowing professionals to focus on case strategy, client advisory, and decision-making - is actively exploring collaborations with law schools in Qatar and beyond to support education, research, and training in legal technology.

Laiwyer.ai was recently selected by Meta and Startupbootcamp Mena as one of only 23 regional companies in the Llama Design Drive - a bold initiative positioning the Middle East at the forefront of real-world applications of large language models (LLMs).

"The potential is enormous. Qatar’s National Vision 2030 calls for stronger institutions, improved efficiency, and knowledge-driven development - and legal technology is at the core of this," said Ahmad al-Kuwari and Mohammed al-Kuwari, co-founders of Laiwyer.ai, which aspires to be a leading AI-powered legal research platform in the Arab region.

The company is still in the early stages of its commercial rollout, yet adoption is growing rapidly across all jurisdictions it covers - Qatar, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt.

"We plan to expand coverage further across the GCC and into wider Mena jurisdictions. At the same time, strengthening our base in Qatar remains a priority. Qatar is not only our home market; it is where we are developing the bilingual AI capabilities that can later be scaled regionally," they said.

To date, Laiwyer.ai has more than 700 active users since its launch weeks ago, reflecting the strong demand for AI-powered legal research in the region with strongest interest coming from law firms, in-house legal departments and sovereign institutions exploring enterprise-level integrations.

"Momentum (of gaining clients) is accelerating consistently across the region," they said, adding the aim is to increase the productivity of lawyers and legal institutions across the Middle East.

"Our long-term plan is to establish Laiwyer.ai as the leading AI-powered legal research platform in the region...In parallel, we have built relationships with technology partners in cloud, data security, and analytics to ensure that Laiwyer.ai remains robust, scalable, and secure as adoption grows," they said.

Highlighting that it is well-positioned with the capital secured to date, which allows it to operate and scale efficiently in the near term; they however said like any growth-stage company, it is currently evaluating strategic funding opportunities to accelerate regional expansion.

It includes further developing its bilingual AI models, and expanding the product offering to more markets across the Mena region.

"At present, we are in discussions with the QDB and other institutions across Qatar that support innovation and local entrepreneurship," they said.

The founders stressed that their preference is to establish headquarters in Qatar and relocate the global AI engineering team - currently based in Portugal and India - to Doha.

"Our goal is to build in Qatar now by attracting world-class AI talent to a market that is still in its early stages, creating high-skilled jobs, and developing local capabilities, while keeping our intellectual property rooted in Qatar as we work toward longer-term regional growth and leading Qatar’s shift to an AI-driven economy,” they added.

Laiwyer.ai is developing bilingual legal-AI capabilities locally as it trains its models not only to understand Arabic and English legal language, but also to handle the context, terminology, and reasoning styles unique to this region.

"It is progressing very well. This goes far beyond translation - it ensures accuracy and trust in a bilingual environment where many professionals move between Arabic statutes and English contracts or court filings. Developing this capability locally also builds national talent and keeps intellectual property rooted in Qatar," according to them.