Doha: Gulf Warehousing Company (GWC) has marked its first participation at Web Summit Qatar 2026 by announcing a strategic collaboration with Apify, a European cloud platform specializing in web data extraction, automation, and AI-driven workflows.
According to Qatar News Agency, the collaboration was announced during the summit taking place from 1 to 4 February in Doha. It brings together GWC's regional and global logistics capabilities with Apify's AI and Model Context Protocol (MCP) infrastructure to support e-commerce businesses as they enter new markets, scale operations, and accelerate growth across the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and other high-growth regions.
The collaboration is designed to address challenges faced by digital-first businesses, including market intelligence, demand discovery, competitive analysis, and cross-border execution. By combining logistics, data, and automation into a single operating model, the initiative aims to shorten time-to-market and reduce the technical and operational friction that often constrains early-stage and scaling e-commerce players.
Matthew Kearns, Group CEO of GWC, stated that their role in e-commerce extends beyond logistics, with objectives to help businesses grow, sell, and expand into new markets, and to scale with them as they scale. Through interoperability between logistics, data, and AI, they are building an integrated e-commerce ecosystem that enables faster expansion, smarter decision-making, and seamless cross-border execution.
Jan Curn, CEO of Apify, emphasized the strategic impact this partnership provides for e-commerce builders, highlighting that GWC understands the market and has the infrastructure, while Apify brings expertise in web data and automation. The combination offers e-commerce builders actionable market intelligence and an operational backbone needed to grow across borders.
As part of the collaboration, GWC and Apify will advance AI-powered workflows and MCP-based solutions tailored to real-world e-commerce use cases, supporting functions such as product discovery, demand analysis, lead generation, and cross-border go-to-market execution.
The parties will also collaborate on knowledge-sharing initiatives, including founder-focused masterclasses and technical sessions at Web Summit Qatar, aimed at helping entrepreneurs and digital-first businesses leverage AI and automation to expand and scale sustainably.
Through this initiative, GWC will provide regional market access, logistics integration, and go-to-market enablement, while Apify contributes its cloud platform, AI agents, and automation tools, including integrations with leading workflow platforms. Together, the collaboration reinforces GWC's strategy to position itself as a strategic enabler of cross-border e-commerce ecosystems that connect infrastructure, intelligence, and execution.
As a first-time participant at Web Summit Qatar, GWC is showcasing how the integration of technology and AI into logistics can unlock new growth pathways for e-commerce and the digital economy, in alignment with the company's long-term growth strategy and Qatar National Vision 2030.