Napster will contribute design, development and product-management resources. One of the central ideas is to create digital versions of teachers trained on their own course materials, papers and other content.
Those digital twins would be available outside normal classroom hours, allowing students to ask questions and revisit concepts while giving teachers more information about where students are struggling.
Napster says the goal is to extend teachers’ reach rather than replace them. “We’re creating a better experience using voice, using video, to create a better way to interact with AI to make it more natural, so AI becomes more like coworkers rather than a machine or tool that you prompt, and we apply this technology in different verticals,” said Samuel Huber, Napster’s CEO for the Middle East and Africa.
Huber previously founded and led UK technology company Landvault, which Infinite Reality acquired in 2024. Infinite Reality then bought Napster for $207 million in 2025 and redirected the brand toward artificial intelligence. Napster shut down its music-streaming service in January 2026.
The education partnership is part of a broader regional expansion. Napster is establishing the UAE as a hub for its Middle East operations and also has a strategic partnership with Kameha Ventures, a Dubai-based venture platform led by Sheikh Ahmed Bin Mana Bin Khalifa Al Maktoum.
Through that relationship, Napster plans to work with government entities, enterprises and institutions on locally developed AI deployments. Kameha is providing market-development support, institutional relationships and help navigating regional commercial opportunities.
Huber said localization will be particularly important as Napster expands across the Gulf. “Localising the offering here is probably more important than in any other part of the world. Here, there’s a lot of cultural nuances that really matter, and even in digital products.”
The company is also emphasizing local data infrastructure. Huber said student information will remain within the country and can be hosted on customer-controlled servers where necessary. Napster also says customer data is not used to train its AI models.
In the UAE, Napster has partnered with G42 to host data and run models locally. In Saudi Arabia, it has worked with Lenovo and data center operator DETASAD on in-country infrastructure.
That approach aligns with Napster’s broader focus on data sovereignty as it seeks government and enterprise customers in the region.
The expansion also comes as the UAE increases its focus on agentic AI. In May 2026, the UAE Cabinet approved a federal framework covering the use of agentic AI across ministries and government entities, alongside a plan to shift 50% of government services and operations toward agentic AI models within two years.
Napster wants its regional strategy to fit into that push by offering AI systems that can be adapted to local requirements rather than deployed as standardized global products.
“The AI model companies have a lot of power; they’re building incredible models, and we want Napster to be an alternative to that,” Huber said.
The company currently has roughly 20 people on its regional team and plans to increase that number to about 500 by 2030.
Education provides one of Napster’s first opportunities to test its new direction at scale. At Gems, the company will be able to see how students and teachers actually use AI agents and digital personas in a working school environment rather than relying only on controlled demonstrations.
Huber acknowledged that the technology raises concerns about whether AI could eventually replace parts of a teacher’s role, but said the current focus remains on augmentation.
“We’re not at the point yet where AI can fully replace humans, and therefore we want to leverage that technology overlaid on top of humans to get the most of it. What we’re building here is not about replacing the course, the lesson, the primary interaction between teachers and students that still happens in the real world.”
For Napster, the partnership also illustrates how dramatically the company has changed since Infinite Reality acquired it. The brand that once centered on music distribution is now being repositioned around embodied and agentic AI, with education becoming an early test of whether that strategy can translate into practical deployments.
This analysis is based on reporting from Wired.
Image courtesy of Napster.
This article was generated with AI assistance and reviewed for accuracy and quality.
