Ma AI Wins Oman's RO13,000 Agentic AI Showdown

The Ministry of Transport, Communications and Information Technology (MTCIT) announced the winners of the second edition of its "Engineer It with AI" competition today, closing out a five-month national contest that pushed 25 teams to build working agentic AI tools. The team OHI AI Labs took first place with a project called "Ma AI," as Times of Oman reported.

🔑 Key Takeaways

• MTCIT closed the second edition of "Engineer It with AI" today, September 14, 2026, with a ceremony held under the auspices of Dr Khamis Saif Al Jabri, Minister of Economy, according to Times of Oman.
• OHI AI Labs won first place for "Ma AI," Faheem took second with "Rafeeq," and Nawat placed third with "Sadeem Robotics."
• Twenty-five teams and 100 participants from governorates across Oman competed for a combined RO13,000 in prizes, first disclosed when Muscat Daily reported the contest's launch in May.
• Six additional teams received special recognition awards for innovation, teamwork, presentation, scalability, social impact and technical execution.
• The competition sits under MTCIT's National Programme for Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Digital Technologies and was launched in patronage of Dr Munthir Hilal Al Busaidi, head of the Oman Vision 2040 Implementation Follow-Up Unit at the Ministry of Economy, per Times of Oman's July coverage of the launch.

🏆 OHI AI Labs Takes the Top Prize

OHI AI Labs' winning platform, "Ma AI," claimed first place ahead of Faheem's "Rafeeq" project in second and Nawat's "Sadeem Robotics" in third, according to Times of Oman's report on the closing ceremony. The event, held under the auspices of Dr Khamis Saif Al Jabri, Minister of Economy, included an accompanying exhibition where all 25 finalist teams showcased their prototypes, and a keynote titled "The Future of the Digital Economy in the Era of Smart Agents."

Beyond the top three, six teams received special recognition: Novera AI for Excellence in Innovation, Itqan for Outstanding Collaboration and Teamwork, Sharyk for Best Presentation and Communication, Mawrid for Most Scalable Product, Sandeed for Outstanding Social Impact, and The Oqtmizers for Technical Excellence.

Prize amounts by placement were not disclosed; MTCIT confirmed a combined pool of RO13,000 across the top three teams when the contest was announced, per Muscat Daily.

🤖 Five Months From Registration to Ceremony

This was the second run of "Engineer It with AI," formally launched on July 1 under the patronage of Dr Munthir Hilal Al Busaidi, head of the Oman Vision 2040 Implementation Follow-Up Unit at the Ministry of Economy, as Times of Oman reported at the time. Registration had closed on May 29, and the 25 selected teams, capped at four members each, went through an in-person bootcamp before spending July and August refining prototypes with mentor support. As AI in Oman reported when the finalists pitched in late August, the contest centres on agentic AI: autonomous systems capable of making decisions and executing multi-step tasks with minimal human input, rather than simple chatbots or single-turn generative tools.

The competition sits under MTCIT's National Programme for Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Digital Technologies, the ministry's umbrella initiative for building local AI capacity through 2026. According to the ministry's stated goals reported by Muscat Daily, the aim is to "strengthen the knowledge-based economy and accelerate the adoption of emerging technologies," with winning projects eligible for further development support toward market deployment.

🇴🇲 Why This Matters for Oman

A five-month, government-run pipeline that takes 100 Omani participants from open registration through mentored prototyping to a public demo day is exactly the kind of repeatable talent infrastructure Vision 2040's digital economy goals depend on. It gives MTCIT a growing bench of named teams and named projects, such as Ma AI, Rafeeq and Sadeem Robotics, that officials and investors can track for further support rather than one-off hackathon output that disappears after the trophies are handed out. For Oman's broader AI ecosystem, which has expanded rapidly this year, a credible national talent funnel matters as much as any single funding announcement or data centre deal.