Careem has opened its Model Context Protocol to developers and start-ups across the Middle East, allowing AI agents to integrate with rides, food, groceries and payments, and has launched a hackathon powered by Amazon Web Services to mark the opening, with the final taking place in Dubai on November 14, 2026. At launch, Careem MCP offers tools across those everyday services, so builders can create agents, assistants and integrations that help people plan a trip or build a shopping cart, while booking and payment happen securely inside the Careem app.
What Careem MCP Opens Up
Careem MCP bridges AI agents and the services millions in the region already use daily. Instead of building a separate ride, food or grocery service, a developer can connect an agent to Careem’s tools to plan, search and assemble orders, while booking and payment stay inside Careem, which retains the transaction and payment security.
Documentation, a tool catalogue and an agent playbook are available at builders.careem.com, Careem’s developer site, which also hosts a sandbox for testing agents against fixed scenarios before they touch real services. The tool catalogue on that site lists 50 tools across eight domains, including food, groceries, shops, cart and checkout, and location, with rides listed as coming soon in the catalogue even as the launch announcement describes rides among the services agents can integrate with. Builders should therefore check the catalogue for the current status of each tool before promising a ride-booking feature, rather than assuming every domain is live on day one.
Careem co-founder and chief AI officer Magnus Olsson framed the move as a shift in how people get things done. AI agents are changing how people get things done, he said, and with Careem MCP the company is opening the services millions use every day to builders across the region, so they can create agents that help plan a trip or put together the weekly shop. The hackathon, he said, is Careem’s way of celebrating that opening.
The Hackathon And What Builders Get
To celebrate the launch, Careem is hosting Careem Builders ’26: Hack to the future, powered by Amazon Web Services. The hackathon challenges builders to create something that makes everyday life simpler for people across the region, with Careem MCP as their starting point. The top 15 teams will compete live in Dubai on November 14, 2026.
The hackathon is open to developers and builders across the region, who can apply individually or in teams of up to three. Applications close on October 31, 2026, at 11:59 PM GST, giving builders only a few days from the announcement to apply. Participants will have access to Careem MCP’s tools and documentation, alongside technical resources from AWS, including free access to Kiro, AWS’s agentic AI development environment, optional prototype credits for Amazon Bedrock and Amazon Bedrock AgentCore, subject to approval, and training sessions led by AWS on building and deploying AI agents and connecting them to MCP servers.
That package is practical: Kiro turns specifications into working code, Bedrock gives access to frontier models through one API, and AgentCore provides managed hosting for agents.
Why A Super App Would Open Itself To Agents
Super apps face a strategic choice as AI agents spread. They can keep their services closed and hope users keep opening the app, or they can let agents work inside their services and risk becoming a back-end utility that users never see. Careem’s approach tries to have it both ways: agents can plan and assemble, but booking and payment happen inside Careem, so the app remains the place where money changes hands and trust is held.
The risk is that agents will make mistakes with real orders, real rides and real money, and that customers will blame Careem even when an outside agent made the error. The safeguards in the launch — documentation, a sandbox, an agent playbook, and payment inside the app — are meant to reduce that risk, but they will only work if builders follow them and if Careem enforces them. The hackathon is, in that sense, a controlled test: 15 finalist teams, working with AWS training and Careem tools, building under supervision before the wider developer community gets loose.
Why It Matters
This matters because the next battle in consumer AI may not be over who has the best chatbot, but over who controls the agents that actually do things: book the ride, order the food, fill the basket. By opening MCP, Careem is betting that agents will become the front door to everyday services in its region, and that it is better to be the platform those agents plug into than to be bypassed by them. The same question of control runs through safe execution for AI agents, identity and kill switches for agents and verified identities for agents: as agents gain the power to spend money on our behalf, the rules for who can act, and where payment happens, become the product.
Background
Careem, the Middle East super app for rides, food, groceries and payments, opened its Model Context Protocol to regional developers on October 28, 2026, with documentation and a tool catalogue at builders.careem.com. Its AWS-powered hackathon, Careem Builders ’26, closes applications on October 31, 2026, and holds its Dubai final on November 14, 2026.
Source: GEC Newswire report, Careem Builders page
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