Building to Stay: How Hub71 Roots High-Growth Companies in Abu Dhabi’s Economy

Hub71’s role is to help high-growth startups build in Abu Dhabi, and to turn what they build into lasting value for the emirate’s economy. Archireef shows what that looks like in practice.

The marine-restoration company joined Hub71 and made Abu Dhabi its base, not to sell into the market but to build from it: relocating its headquarters, manufacturing locally and rooting its business here. Hub71 is where that journey began, and what connected the company to the investors, government entities and industry partners it went on to work with.

The results read as economic contribution, not just company milestones. In 3.5 years as a Hub71 company, Archireef has signed more than AED40.4 million in commercial and government partnerships, spanning energy, real estate, ports, finance, education and government, and established a 400-square-metre manufacturing facility in KEZAD with a local team to run it. For the emirate, that is capital committed to Abu Dhabi, advanced manufacturing capability added to its industrial base, and specialist jobs created and kept. Its partners include the Environment Agency – Abu Dhabi, AD Ports Group, FAB, Modon, and others.

Building from Abu Dhabi, not just in it

Archireef develops marine-restoration solutions and helps its clients manage nature and regulatory risk. The company identifies risks and opportunities through satellite imagery and ground truthing, mitigates with solutions including Reef Tiles and Eco SeaWall Panels, monitors through AI-powered technologies, and reports in alignment with global standards to help asset owners assess and manage ocean nature-risk. The work sits directly on top of areas Abu Dhabi has prioritised: biodiversity, coastal resilience and sustainability.

Its decision to manufacture here matters as much as its decision to move here. Rather than importing finished product, Archireef makes its Reef Tiles at its KEZAD facility, adding advanced NatureTech and ClimateTech capabilities to the emirate’s industrial base and creating the kind of specialised local jobs that stay. It is a small footprint with an outsized signal: long-term production, not just presence.

That commitment has also received national recognition. Archireef placed first in the Manufacturing category at the 2024 Make it in the Emirates Awards and later received the Sheikh Khalifa Excellence Award. These awards recognise both its manufacturing contribution and the strength of the business it is building from Abu Dhabi.

Partnerships that anchor value in Abu Dhabi

Archireef’s partnerships show what anchoring looks like in practice, and where the economic value lands. Its work in the emirate ranges from large-scale coral-reef restoration to ecological engineering for coastal infrastructure, deploying its Reef Tiles to rebuild marine habitats and its Eco SeaWall Panels to improve the ecological performance of seawalls without enlarging their footprint.

Across energy, real estate, finance and hospitality, the pattern is the same: established Abu Dhabi institutions putting commercial weight behind a company that chose to build here, keeping the value of those contracts inside the emirate’s economy.

“There are invisible liabilities on companies’ balance sheets; these relate to nature and on companies’ dependence thereof. In Abu Dhabi, both regulators and companies recognise that these liabilities must be addressed with action. As such, we believe that Abu Dhabi can be a global leader in this nascent field and building from here empowers us to remain a pioneer.”

Deniz Tekerek, Co-founder and Chief Commercial Officer, Archireef

How Hub71 turns startups into economic value

Anchoring a company like this does not happen on its own. It depends on an environment where technology can be commercialised, partnerships can form and production can scale, and on the connections that put a newly arrived company in front of the right investors, government entities and industry partners. That is what Hub71 provides, and what makes it Abu Dhabi’s route for converting high-growth startups into companies that build here. Each of Archireef’s milestones began with that access; the through-line back to Hub71 is what turned market entry into a lasting base of operations.

The value this creates for Abu Dhabi

Archireef could have grown from anywhere. It chose to grow from Abu Dhabi, and that choice is the point. A company that moves its headquarters, builds its factory and hires its team in the emirate keeps its capital, its capability and its jobs here, and puts its technology to work on Abu Dhabi's own coastline. That is what anchoring a high-growth company delivers, and it is what Hub71 is built to make happen: not startups that visit, but companies that stay and build. This is what Hub71 does, turn startups into value for Abu Dhabi.