2025 highlights: November

Technology highlights for November 2025 included:

- Airbus initiated immediate precautionary action with owners of its A320 family aircraft after discovering that intense solar radiation can corrupt data critical to the functioning of flight controls. A number of flights were cancelled as a result. 

- Aramco, an integrated energy and chemicals company, has deployed KSA's first quantum computer, and the region's first quantum computer dedicated to industrial applications. The Pasqal quantum computer is powered by neutral-atom technology and is expected to help build regional expertise and accelerate the development of quantum applications across the energy, materials, and industrial sectors in the kingdom and in the broader Middle East.

- Avanade opens an APAC AI Modernization hub in Malaysia. The regional centre of excellence aims to help organisations modernise operations and innovate with AI.

Source: GSMA Intelligence Enterprise in Focus: Global Digital Transformation Survey 2025. Digital transformation of industries in MENA, by ranking.

- The GSMA's Accelerating digital industries in the GCC and wider MENA region report, launched at the inaugural MWC25 Doha, has found that enterprises across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) are outpacing global peers in their adoption of advanced digital technologies. Key drivers for this phenomenon include national digital agendas and accelerated investment in AI and 5G.

The GSMA Foundry, the GSMA's innovation hub, and the Khalifa University of Science and Technology in the UAE will collaborate to advance research and innovation in telcommunications-related AI through a shared commitment to knowledge exchange and digital transformation. Khalifa University will collaborate with GSMA Foundry to develop specialised AI data assets, models and benchmarking frameworks for telecom applications, supporting the development of open robust, safe and energy-efficient solutions for the industry.

In the first phase of the collaboration, the GSMA and Khalifa University will release key Open Telco assets including TelecomGPT, a telco-first large language model (LLM), with a chat interface hosted on LightOn, and an Open Telco knowledge graph focused on 3GPP documentation, built using LightOn compute and hosted on Hugging Face. 

- JD.com announced that 2,000+ home appliance brands saw 100% year-on-year sales growth during Singles’ Day (11.11, or 11 November). The company also reported that the number of customers making a purchase during the promotion increased by 40% year-on-year, while order volume increased by nearly 60%. 

November also hosts a number of retail highlights like Black Friday, while the Monday after, Cyber Monday, falls on December 1 this year. 

“With the holiday season approaching fast, many are counting down for two of the busiest shopping days of the year, Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Retail stores and online marketplaces have no doubt been planning for increased traffic, but have they adequately prepared for the next cyberattack? As security professionals, we know that there’s never a 'slow period' for bad actors and while many look forward to holiday travel, vacations and unwinding, malicious threat groups will seek opportunities to find and exploit any weak links threatening an organisation's security posture," said Scott Caveza, Senior Staff Research Engineer, Tenable.

“Staying ahead of these threats requires an effective exposure management platform to give organisations a comprehensive view of the exposures and vulnerabilities putting their assets at the most risk. With over 302,000 registered common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs), security teams need to be able to prioritise and mitigate the vulnerabilities that matter the most. An exposure management platform ensures the team can identify assets and understand the tech stacks that drive them, providing better visibility into which vulnerabilities impact those assets.

“With the constant threat of opportunistic threat groups, security teams need full visibility into misconfigurations and insecure identities that could allow an attack to have a devastating effect in a matter of keystrokes. As retailers rush to onboard additional servers and push updates to their websites, are they ensuring to scan their custom web applications for vulnerabilities or perform audits on their web server configurations to ensure these deployments are secure? While some e-commerce retailers may utilise off-the-shelf content management systems (CMS), others often deploy custom web applications.

“In both cases, identifying vulnerabilities, weaknesses and misconfigurations are vital in ensuring sales and transactions can continue securely. The holidays can be stressful, but a breach can have long-lasting impacts on an organisation and its customers. This holiday season, it’s imperative that security teams take a proactive approach to their organisation's security. From IT assets, OT assets, cloud infrastructure, web applications and identity, it’s not enough to just scan for vulnerabilities; security teams need to have the visibility and insights of the exposures that put them at risk. This holiday season, let’s keep attackers out in the cold and ensure we’re taking the right proactive steps to reduce risk, remediate exposures and continue to move beyond reactive security.”

- Meta is reportedly in talks to use Google's AI chips by 2027, leading to NVIDIA and AMD share prices falling.

Nigel Green, CEO of deVere Group, an independent financial advisory organisation said: “Investors are reassessing their assumptions. The belief that one dominant supplier can dictate the pace, pricing and direction of the entire sector no longer holds. Capital is responding to genuine competition.”

“The Meta–Google move signals a broader trend: hyperscalers want more control over their own AI infrastructure. The era of relying on a single provider for the most expensive, most strategically sensitive hardware is fading. Investors recognise what that means," Green added.

“When platforms diversify their chip supply, it forces every participant in the AI ecosystem to compete on efficiency, not narrative.

“This is the pressure the sector needs. It pushes innovation harder, contains excessive pricing power, and ultimately delivers a healthier investment environment.”

- Merchants in the Amazon Payment Services network will accept UnionPay cards in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, across countries including Bahrain, Jordan, KSA, Kuwait, Lebanon, Qatar, and UAE. 

- The Singapore Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) launched resources to support parents in fostering healthy digital habits in their children. Neighbouring Malaysia announced a social media ban for those under 16 in 2026. Australia's ban for anyone under 16 kicks in on December 10, 2025.

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