Episode
#395: 45 Years, 7 Tech Waves & a $1.5 Billion IPO at 71 | Fayez Ibbini on Building Alpha Data, AI & Why Retirement is a Lie
- Published
- Apr 27, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 4399
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Summary
He arrived in Abu Dhabi in 1981 when roads turned to soft sand and ceilings collapsed because villas were built with saltwater cement. He came for six months. He never left. Forty-five years later, he just took his company public at a $1.5 billion valuation and he's 71 years old with zero plans to stop. In this episode, Spencer sits down with Fayez Ibbini , founder of Alpha Data, one of the UAE's most enduring technology companies. From coding assembly language for the Kuwait Stock Exchange on 16-hour days, to pivoting from IBM mini-computers to PCs, to riding every wave from networking and the internet to cloud, mobile, big data, IoT and now AI . Fayez has been at the frontier of technology in this region for nearly half a century. But this isn't just a business story. It's a story about passion over comfort, about the cost of obsession, about what it really means to build something that outlasts you. He'll tell you that if you haven't started a business by 40, don't bother. That retirement was invented to push you out. That AI is not another wave - it's a tsunami. And that the most expensive lessons in business are almost always about people. Whether you're an entrepreneur at the start of your journey, a leader navigating the AI revolution, or someone who wonders what it looks like to still be curious and hungry at 71 . T his conversation will challenge everything you think you know about success, technology, and time. Timestamps: 00:00 – "A golden cage": why Fayez came for six months and stayed 45 years 01:28 – Abu Dhabi vs. Dubai and the mind-boggling speed of UAE transformation 06:34 – From electrical engineering to poultry imports to farming — finding what actually excites him 11:20 – Coding the Kuwait Stock Exchange in assembly language and the moment he realize…