Collaboration will begin at GEMS School of Research and Innovation, connecting the GEMS Global Education AI Hub with Napster’s platform to build measurable value for learners, educators, and education providers
Jay Varkey, Deputy CEO of GEMS Education.
DUBAI: September 17, 2026 — GEMS Education, one of the oldest and largest private K-12 education providers in the Middle East, today announced a strategic partnership with Napster, the AI company democratizing access to expertise through embodied, multimodal agents. The partnership establishes a joint commitment to building responsible AI agents and digital personas to support education and personal development.
Baz Nijjar
Together, GEMS Education and Napster will explore how AI can be safely incorporated into common educational principles, such as guided practice, formative feedback, communication and presentation development, reflection and goal setting, personalised skills development, and professional learning for educators. The announcement follows a broader push across the region to formalize AI’s role in education. The UAE Cabinet approved measures earlier this month to establish an AI curriculum across the country’s education sector, with a goal of training 22,000 educators to use AI in teaching, assessment, curriculum analysis, and lesson planning. GEMS Education and Napster are contributing to that shift with a commitment to building at the scale of an entire school network.
The first phase will be anchored at GEMS School of Research & Innovation (SRI), where the GEMS Global Education AI Hub and GEMS Intelligence 360 platform will provide a real-world environment in which educators, students, and partners can co-design, test, and evaluate AI agents and digital personas. Building on SRI’s wider work in AI and immersive technology with research and industry partners, the initiative will use evidence, professional judgement, and applicable UAE education requirements to determine where these capabilities add genuine educational value. Through this work, GEMS aims to establish a globally relevant model for the positive and responsible use of AI agents and digital personas in K-12 education.
Napster is providing dedicated design, development, and product management resources to the partnership based on Napster Learn, the company’s proactive, AI-powered learning system developed to give learners 24/7 access to course resources and mentorship. Working in close collaboration, the two organizations will begin by developing proof-of-concept projects and showcases, including digitalization of instructors, gamified learning, AI-assisted content creation, and classroom simulations. The shared goal is deployment across GEMS schools in the Middle East and beyond, with both organizations targeting a working solution and release before the end of 2026.
The initiative is designed to extend the reach and impact of GEMS’ teachers, not replace them. Planned capabilities include creating digital twins from teachers’ own subject-matter knowledge and giving students on-demand access to approved educational content and teacher-informed expertise outside school hours in multiple languages. Guardrails and safety protocols will be incorporated into the design, development, and evaluation processes, keeping humans informed and able to intervene if necessary. Napster and GEMS will assess participant usage and engagement to determine the efficacy and utility of AI application in educational settings and support educational outcomes.
“AI should strengthen the human relationships at the heart of education, not diminish them,” said Jay Varkey, Deputy CEO of GEMS Education. “By combining our educational expertise and reach with Napster’s agent and digital personas capabilities, we aim to build a responsible model that supports the UAE’s ambition and can help set a positive global benchmark for K-12 education.”
“AI is reshaping every industry, and there is no sector where getting the approach right matters more than education,” said John Acunto, CEO of Napster. “This partnership with GEMS gives us the chance to build responsible infrastructure to enable student success. Napster’s goal is to democratize access to expertise, and the best place to start is in the classroom.”
The scale of the partnership sets it apart from other AI-in-education pilots in the past, which have typically been limited to single schools or departments.
“Our focus is to establish where AI agents and digital personas genuinely improve learning, feedback, confidence, and personal development,” said Baz Nijjar, Senior Vice President, Innovation, AI & Futurism and Managing Director, Intelligence 360 at GEMS Education. “SRI and the GEMS Global Education AI Hub allow us to co-design and evaluate these capabilities with teachers and students, with safeguarding, age-appropriateness, and human oversight built in from the outset.”
“Every school system across the Gulf is working to translate a national AI ambition into actual classroom strategy,” said Samuel Huber, CEO of MENA for Napster. “GEMS Education is taking this sentiment and expanding it to an entire network of schools at a time when AI education is moving quickly. We intend to bring this model to more school systems across the region.”
The GEMS partnership follows Napster’s announcement of establishing an EdTech and Embodied-AI Center of Excellence with Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University in Riyadh and Nourah Cloud, part of a broader commitment to expanding AI education across the Middle East. Napster plans to continue building out this commitment in the region’s education systems in the months ahead.
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About Napster
Founded on the principle of democratizing access, first to music in 1999, now to expertise in the AI era, Napster has consistently remained at the forefront of technological shifts that empower users. Today, the company builds embodied, multimodal AI agents that engage employees and customers where they already work: through video presence, voice, and text. Designed to work alongside people rather than replace them, Napster’s agents carry institutional knowledge into every interaction, elevating the user’s experience and improving business outcomes. For more information, visit napster.com.
About GEMS Education
GEMS Education is one of the world’s leading, oldest and largest private K-12 education providers, with a legacy spanning more than 65 years. Founded in the UAE with roots dating back to 1959, and beginning with a single school in a private home in Dubai in 1968, GEMS remains a family-founded and family-led organisation, guided by its visionary Founder and Chairman, Sunny Varkey, and his sons Dino Varkey, Group Chief Executive Officer, and Jay Varkey, Deputy Group Chief Executive Officer.
Today, GEMS educates more than 200,000 students from over 176 nationalities through its global network of owned and managed schools, supported by more than 17,700 employees, including over 10,000 educators and school leaders representing 112 nationalities. Having educated more than 500,000 students over the decades, GEMS continues to provide world-class education through four curricula, preparing young people with the knowledge, character and confidence to thrive in a rapidly changing world.
Guided by its enduring mission to put a quality education within the reach of every learner, everywhere, GEMS combines academic rigour with character development, wellbeing, innovation and strong partnerships with families and communities. Its graduates progress to the world’s leading universities, with students accepted into more than 2,000 universities across 71 countries over the past five years, including all eight Ivy League universities in the US and all 24 Russell Group universities and colleges in the UK.
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