AD Ports Group to build 100+ AI agents with Azure AI Foundry, transforming trade operations

AD Ports Group oversees 34 ports and terminals that connect the United Arab Emirates to the wider world. Its mandate is both practical and ambitious: to position Abu Dhabi at the frontier of global trade. By combining large-scale infrastructure with digital innovation, it aims to meet the shifting demands of global supply chains.

A legacy of AI innovation

AI at AD Ports Group is more of a reflex than a program. “AI is a major part of everything we do—it’s not separate from our core operations,” says Mohamed Jamal-Eddine, Group CIO at AD Ports Group. The Group has been using AI and machine learning from day one, in areas ranging from yard management to container allocation. “Now, with next-generation AI, we’re finding entirely new ways of working to solve our challenges and scale rapidly,” shares Jamal-Eddine.

To unlock even more potential from next-gen AI, AD Ports Group formed a compact AI Agents Workforce—a selected mix of data scientists, software engineers, cybersecurity specialists, infrastructure engineers, and domain experts who share an enthusiasm for AI. “Their goal was straightforward to build purpose-designed AI agents to address stubborn pain points, automate repetitive tasks, bring together fragmented knowledge, and improve decision-making to paper-heavy procurement and compliance tasks,” recalls Sultan Al Ghaithi, Group Chief HR Officer at AD Ports Group.

Growth supported by technology

AI Agents Workforce then used various tools with a focus around Azure AI Foundry to securely design, test, monitor AI agents, and Copilot Studio to build the agents quickly with little coding knowledge required. “We first built agents horizontally, such as for generating job descriptions or automating letter drafting that every department could use and then went vertical, creating more specialized agents for particular business clusters where work was more complex,” recalls Al Ghaithi. 

The Group then deployed agents in the business and gave employees access to a live AI Agents Directory, which allowed them to experiment and find new use cases that suited their needs. 

To manage the creation of AI agents, AD Ports Group built the AI Agents Directory, an internal platform where employees can “hire” new agents. By entering information such as the target user, success parameters, and role description, the system can produce a product-requirement document and a ready-to-build blueprint. “Today, it can take us about an hour to develop and deploy a simple new agent,” says Jamal-Eddine. “Now, we have a pipeline of over hundreds of agents in our Agent Directory.”

Tailored agents for every challenge

One of the flagship agents is the Vessel Speed Optimizer, set to give real-time guidance to AD Ports Group’s fleet of 270 vessels on how fast to sail. By factoring in weather and congestion at the destination port with many other data points, it can recommend slowing down when it predicts a berth will not be free, reducing fuel use in the process. “Fuel usage is one of the main drivers of costs, so financial savings are the primary benefit,” says Jamal-Eddine. “On a single leg, a vessel can save thousands of dirhams. When we follow the AI’s recommendations from waypoint to waypoint, we’re also reducing CO₂ emissions. Beyond the numbers, the system also offers softer benefits—fewer idle hours for crews, less stress on engines, and potentially longer vessel life.

Another key AI agent is the Container Balancer, which predicts where empty containers will be needed and prompts the team to move them in advance. For instance, if demand is expected in one region, it can recommend shifting an idle container from another region ahead of time. It also checks storage costs and contracts, so containers end up where they’re cheapest to keep. “Previously, this was manual process. Now, AI lets us do it far faster and more scientifically,” notes Jamal-Eddine.

As the pipeline expanded, more specialized agents appeared. The Claim Detective scans and checks incoming documentation against international shipping and insurance rules. “With it, we can respond to customers quickly and in line with global regulations,” says Jamal-Eddine. 

Another, the Investment Advisor, supports AD Ports Group’s investment teams before proposals are submitted. It checks for missing data, ensures alignment with internal investment guardrails, and significantly reduces review time. By handling the groundwork, the AI agent frees decision-makers to focus on judgment and strategy rather than paperwork.

Giving employees time and power

On top of the AI agents, the team also implemented Microsoft 365 Copilot to handle everyday tasks such as summarizing port notices, drafting updates, and extracting key actions from meetings and emails so employees could focus on higher-value work. “The impact was immediate. In priority functions like finance, legal, and procurement, employees could draft documents and emails in a third faster than before, while long meetings and email threads were condensed into actionable summaries in minutes rather than hours,” says Al Ghaithi. “Executives who once waited for piecemeal updates could now get a single, cited answer to policy questions almost 40% faster.”

By offloading repetitive tasks such as writing job descriptions, compiling routine reports, scanning policies, the AI agents can give people back time to think and strategize. “We took the principles, knowledge and encoded them into AI,” Jamal-Eddine explains. “Anything repeated more than once becomes a candidate for AI.” For the staff, the rise of AI agents has been less about replacement than about relief. “Agents now take care of repetitive work, so our people can focus on what really matters: planning, problem-solving, innovating, and strengthening relationships. Humans always make the final decisions, AI just clears the way,” says Al Ghaithi.

Ready to scale

Looking ahead, AD Ports Group is pushing its experiment to scale. The goal is for 90% of all new code to be generated by AI by the end of the year, allowing agents to be built and deployed at unprecedented speed. “We envision everyone in our organization working with multiple agents assisting them,” shares Al Ghaithi. Today AD Ports Group has over 7,000 employees; within three years, the company expects its agents to outnumber its workforce, an agent at least for each employee. With operations expanding, Jamal-Eddine concludes, “By combining human expertise with AI, we’re driving innovation, sustainability, and growth. And as we expand, that partnership will be key to shaping the future of global trade.”

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