From Indian Realty to Dubai Data: How AI Is Reshaping Global Commerce

The most arresting figure to emerge from the latest cross-industry surveys is not in tech or telecoms, but in bricks and mortar. Artificial intelligence adoption among India’s corporate real estate players has vaulted from under 5 per cent in 2023 to 91 per cent in 2025, according to a FICCI-KPMG report. The sector, already contributing 7.3 per cent to national GDP, is projected to mushroom from $650 billion to $5.8 trillion by 2047, with nearly $906 billion in new housing stock expected within a decade. This leap mirrors a wider global pattern: from the Arabian Gulf to the Nordic economies, AI is moving from pilot projects to operational backbone, altering how capital is deployed and how industries compete.

Viewed from Mumbai, the transformation extends well beyond property. Indian banks, insurers and fintech firms are shifting from being software buyers to software builders, embracing “agentic” AI that orchestrates complex decisions without human intervention, as cloud executives on the subcontinent have observed. That re-engineering, accelerated by data modernization, is creating what insiders call “a completely new operating model for financial services.” In parallel, Swedish accounting platform Fortnox is addressing a distinctly European pain point: the persistent gap between bank payments, bookkeeping and advisory. By collapsing supplier-invoice entry, digital signing and automated reconciliation into a single flow, the firm aims to liberate small business owners from manual administration—a trend familiar to entrepreneurs across the Nordics.

Meanwhile, Dubai is leveraging AI in two distinct registers. The emirate’s property market has entered a “strategic maturity phase,” with transparency improvements lifting it to 28th in the Global Real Estate Transparency Index, feeding broad-based investor demand well beyond luxury towers. At the same time, DAMAC Properties chairman Hussain Sajwani, a billionaire close to former US President Donald Trump, is betting $66 billion on data-centre infrastructure to become “the world’s data king.” His ambition crystallises the link between real-estate wealth and the soaring computational demands of generative AI. Dubai Islamic Bank’s successful pricing of a $1 billion perpetual sukuk this week, at a 6.25 per cent profit rate, demonstrates that regional lenders can attract significant capital even amid geopolitical headwinds—money that will partly fuel the technology-driven expansion.

From Stockholm, two further signals warrant attention. Private-equity group EQT has requested extra time for due diligence on a potential bid for British testing and certification firm Intertek, indicating that deal-makers remain selective in a volatile market. Separately, a sharp sell-off in AB Volvo shares after the finance chief warned of rising cost inflation was dismissed as an overreaction by analysts at Pareto Securities, who see a buying opportunity. Such episodes underscore the sensitivity of European industrials to any hint that margins might be squeezed, even as AI-related productivity gains promise a countervailing force.

The common thread across these geographies is the convergence of AI, capital availability and regulatory maturity. Whether it is Indian developers embedding predictive analytics in project planning, a Dubai tycoon building server farms, or Swedish fintechs automating the last mile of business banking, the infrastructure and psychology of commerce are being rewired. The risk for investors and policymakers alike is that the speed of adoption outpaces governance. But the direction of travel, from the subcontinent to Scandinavia, is unmistakable: AI is no longer a sector; it is the operating system of modern capitalism.