DMCC

DMCC is an authority of the Government of Dubai, and its mission since 2002 has been to make Dubai a gateway for commodity trade and enterprise. Law No. 3 of 2020, issued by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum as Ruler of Dubai, set up the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre Authority as a public authority with financial and administrative independence. The law makes the authority responsible for licensing companies, writing the rules of the free zone, supervising its activities and building its infrastructure, and it attaches DMCC to the Investment Corporation of Dubai.

Ahmed Bin Sulayem is Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of DMCC, Feryal Ahmadi is Deputy CEO and Chief Operating Officer, and Hamad Mubarak Buamim chairs the board. Companies licensed by DMCC account for 15 percent of all foreign direct investment in Dubai, according to the authority. The fDi Magazine of the Financial Times has named DMCC Global Free Zone of the Year nine times.

More than 26,000 companies hold a DMCC license, and more than 250 new businesses join each month. They include brokers, banks, commodities exchanges and professional services firms, but also the restaurants, hotels and shops of the two districts. DMCC groups its members into sector ecosystems, among them agriculture, tea, coffee, gold, diamonds, energy, maritime trade, gaming, e-commerce, financial services, crypto and AI.

A DMCC license covers one or more of the more than 1,000 licensed business activities that the free zone allows. The founders keep 100 percent ownership of their company and can move all profits to their home country, and personal income tax in Dubai is zero. DMCC also rents out offices in its towers and shared work spaces for founders and small companies that need only a desk.

Dubai handles about 15 percent of the world trade in gold, and most of it flows through DMCC. DMCC applies the UAE Good Delivery standard for the responsible sourcing, refining and distribution of gold, and it owns the DMCC Vault, built five levels below ground in Almas Tower. DMCC also hosts the Dubai Precious Metals Conference, whose 2024 edition brought together more than 800 people from the industry.

The Dubai Diamond Exchange has more than 1,350 member companies and is the only bourse in the Gulf region affiliated with the World Federation of Diamond Bourses. DMCC joined the Kimberley Process against conflict diamonds in 2003, and trade in rough and polished diamonds through Dubai reached USD 41.7 billion in 2025. The DMCC Tea Centre in the Jebel Ali Free Zone stores up to 5,000 tonnes of tea and handles 43,000 tonnes a year.

Jumeirah Lakes Towers, known as JLT, and Uptown Dubai are the two districts of DMCC, with 87 residential and commercial towers and about 100,000 people who live or work there. Around the lakes of JLT there are more than 470 cafés and restaurants, more than 300 shops and at least seven hotels. DMCC plans both districts as models of sustainable urban development, and Uptown Dubai aims for LEED v4 Gold certification.

Uptown Tower, with 22 floors of office space, is the headquarters of DMCC and the home of its crypto and AI centers. In April 2026, DMCC launched two more office towers, One Uptown Place with 21 floors and Two Uptown Place with 15 floors, due for completion in the first quarter of 2028. The two towers add more than 560,000 square feet of offices, which takes the commercial space of Uptown Dubai past one million square feet.

The DMCC Crypto Centre in Uptown Tower is home to more than 650 crypto firms. A standard DMCC crypto license covers activities such as software development and consultancy, and a company that offers regulated virtual asset services also needs a license from VARA, the Dubai regulator, which it obtains through DMCC. In October 2024, at CV Summit 2024 in Zug, DMCC signed an agreement with the Swiss venture firm CV VC to connect the Web3 ecosystems of Dubai and Switzerland.

The DMCC AI Centre, also in Uptown Tower, has co-working space, meeting rooms and a showroom for AI solutions, and it runs incubators and hackathons. Its AI license covers seven core AI activities, and DMCC names IBM Consulting and JetBrains among the partners of the center.

DMCC stands for Dubai Multi Commodities Centre, which is the name of both the free zone and the government authority that runs it. The name comes from the task DMCC was given at its founding in 2002, which was to make Dubai a center of commodity trade.

DMCC has its headquarters in Uptown Tower in Uptown Dubai, and its Member Engagement Centre for licensed companies is in Almas Tower in Jumeirah Lakes Towers. The Tea Centre is the exception, because it operates from the Jebel Ali Free Zone under a DMCC license.

The Register of DMCC Entities is a public directory of the companies registered in the free zone, with a simple and an advanced search. Anyone can use it to confirm that a trading partner is registered with DMCC before signing a contract with that company.

DMCC sells all-inclusive business setup packages that start at AED 35,484, and the AI Centre package includes a company license and a co-working desk. Besides its DMCC trade license, a company needs a Dubai Unified License, and regulated crypto services also need the separate VARA license.