Haier x Department of Physical Education Kicks Off 'DPE x Haier CUP 2026'

Empowering Thailand's Young Football Talents, Driving Smart Home x Smart Life Vision Through Fusion of Technology, Sports, and Lifestyle

BANGKOK, May 22, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Haier, the world's No.1 Smart Home enterprise and the world's No.1 major appliance brand for 17 consecutive years, is advancing its "Smart Home to Smart Life" strategy in Thailand through the power of sports. In announcing the collaboration with the Department of Physical Education, Haier has officially launched the "DPE x Haier CUP 2026", Thailand's first nationwide youth and public football tournament for players under 16 years old. The initiative aims to unlock the potential of young Thai footballers and inspire the next generation to pursue their dreams in sports.

Mr. Dong Jianping, President of Haier Electrical Appliances (Thailand) Co., Ltd., said, "Today's consumers increasingly value smart living in multiple dimensions. Smart today extends beyond technology into lifestyle, mindset, and how people live. Sports have become one of the key activities gaining greater interest among the new generation, as they go beyond competition and are closely connected to health, community building, and inspiration for living."

"This aligns perfectly with Haier's strategy of evolving from Smart Home to Smart Life, delivering smart experiences across multiple dimensions for consumers. In particular, Haier has been committed to sports engagement, hosting events including the Haier Run mini-marathon and the Haier Cup badminton tournament. The company has also served as a principal sponsor of major international tennis tournaments, including the Australian Open and Roland-Garros, as well as being official global partner of Liverpool FC and Paris Saint-Germain. The tournament provides Thai youth with a pathway to higher-level competition and reflects Haier's commitment to building a sustainable sports ecosystem in Thailand."

He added that smart technology plays an important role in enhancing convenience while improving energy efficiency, enabling homes to better support both relaxation and daily living. "Haier is committed to developing a connected 'Home Ecosystem' that seamlessly connects appliances to enhance usability, reduce unnecessary energy consumption, and respond to consumer demand for technology, value, and long-term sustainability."

Building on its sports ecosystem, Haier expands into grassroots youth football, one of the world's most popular sports among the younger generation. The launch of DPE x Haier CUP 2026 marks Haier's first youth football tournament in Thailand, expanding opportunities for Thai youth to showcase their potential, promoting an active lifestyle and fostering the sustainable growth of Thailand's sports community.

Mr. Suthon Wichairat, Deputy Director General of the Department of Physical Education said, "The Department of Physical Education places strong emphasis on the continuous development of youth sports by creating greater access to sporting opportunities for young people across the country. In particular, football inspires positive energy and connects youth with broader society and sports communities. The collaboration with Haier Thailand in organizing this tournament reflects a concrete public–private partnership in developing a sports ecosystem, providing a platform for Thai youth to fully develop their skills and showcase their potential. It also aims to elevate the standards of youth football competitions in Thailand to an international level, while driving sustainable growth and new momentum for the future of Thai sports."

The DPE x Haier CUP 2026 will run from April to September 2026, from the qualifying rounds through to the final stage at the National Stadium (Suphachalasai Stadium) in Bangkok. The tournament is expected to engage more than 10,000 participants across Thailand, including athletes, parents, and the public, fostering broader participation and strengthening the grassroots football ecosystem.

As a highlight, the winning team will compete in a regional friendly tournament alongside youth athletes from Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines, promoting sports exchange, cultural understanding, and international friendships. In addition, a special opportunity will be extended to 10 "Man of the Match" players from the quarter-final stage, who will be invited to the United Kingdom to visit Liverpool's museum and stadium, and attend a live Premier League match, offering an exclusive world-class football experience.

About Haier
Haier is a global leader in home appliances and smart home technology. With a mission to create high-quality home appliances to cater to diverse needs, Haier swiftly adapts to the rapid changes in consumer preferences across over 100 countries worldwide. Haier has ranked No.1 in Euromonitor International's Global Major Appliances Brand ranking for 17 consecutive years, from 2009 to 2025.

Haier Thailand is dedicated to developing products ad services tailored to Thai consumers. In 2019, the company began transitioning from a home appliance provider to an IoT-enabled smart home brand. Haier Thailand is building towards becoming a leading smart home ecosystem brand in Thailand.

 

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Haier x Department of Physical Education Kicks Off 'DPE x Haier CUP 2026'

Haier x Department of Physical Education Kicks Off 'DPE x Haier CUP 2026'

• The collaboration pairs McKinsey's transformation expertise, including QuantumBlack, with Opus, AppliedAI's Agentic Process Execution (APX) platform, to deploy governed, auditable workflows in regulated industries.
• A joint deployment with a leading European chemicals manufacturer cut a two-week vendor onboarding process to under five minutes of active processing, with a 99 percent-plus reduction in manual effort.

ABU DHABI, UAE and NEW YORK, May 22, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- AppliedAI and McKinsey & Company announced their collaboration to help regulated enterprises rewire mid- and back-office operations with agentic AI. The partnership combines McKinsey's end-to-end transformation capability, including the technical depth of QuantumBlack, with Opus, AppliedAI's Agentic Process Execution platform. The collaboration focuses on regulated industries and business process operations.

McKinsey research shows that 62 percent of organisations are experimenting with AI agents, but only 23 percent have scaled an agentic system inside their enterprise. The constraint is no longer model capability. It is execution: the ability to translate model capability into governed, auditable, production-grade workflows that hold up under regulatory scrutiny. This collaboration is built to close that gap, compressing the path from transformation strategy to operating workflow from months to weeks.

Opus enables organisations to discover, build, run, optimise, and govern agentic workflows, with a persistent enterprise memory layer that turns each deployment into compounding institutional intelligence. The platform is model-agnostic, orchestrates work across existing enterprise systems, and is designed for business stakeholders, not only technical teams, to own and evolve the workflows that run their operations, reflecting a broader shift toward putting AI capability in the hands of the people closest to the work.

The collaboration combines McKinsey's domain and change management expertise, and Quantum Black's technical depth with Opus' capabilities to help clients rapidly re-imagine and deploy agentic enterprise workflows. Under the collaboration, McKinsey leads the identification and reimagination of high-friction workflows, engaging business and technical stakeholders in new ways made possible through Opus, and embeds the governance and operating model changes required to run agentic systems at scale. AppliedAI provides the platform on which those reimagined workflows are built, deployed, and continuously improved. The combined offering is designed to accelerate time-to-value and lift the return on agentic process transformation.

"Our collaboration with AppliedAI addresses the need for an agentic solution for mid and back-office workflows. It also introduces new tools that support the enterprise AI roadmap, rapidly uncovers business requirements and re-imagines workflows that accelerate our AI efforts. This gives clients a governed, auditable path from transformation strategy to operational workflow in weeks not months," says Ben Ellencweig, Global Lead for QuantumBlack Partnerships and Alliances, McKinsey & Company.

Demonstrated impact

In a joint deployment with a leading European chemicals manufacturer operating under stringent regulatory requirements, McKinsey and AppliedAI used Opus to transform a vendor onboarding process that had been manual, slow, and error-prone, with data fragmented across systems and progress dependent on repeated follow-ups. By automating data capture, compliance checks, and counterparty communications, the joint effort delivered:

• A 99 percent-plus reduction in manual processing effort
• Cycle time compressed from approximately two weeks to under five minutes of active processing
• Materially improved data accuracy, compliance posture, and real-time process visibility

ABU DHABI, UAE and NEW YORK, May 22, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- AppliedAI and McKinsey & Company announced their collaboration to help regulated enterprises rewire mid- and back-office operations with agentic AI. The partnership combines McKinsey's end-to-end transformation capability, including the technical depth of QuantumBlack, with Opus, AppliedAI's Agentic Process Execution platform. The collaboration focuses on regulated industries and business process operations.

McKinsey research shows that 62 percent of organisations are experimenting with AI agents, but only 23 percent have scaled an agentic system inside their enterprise. The constraint is no longer model capability. It is execution: the ability to translate model capability into governed, auditable, production-grade workflows that hold up under regulatory scrutiny. This collaboration is built to close that gap, compressing the path from transformation strategy to operating workflow from months to weeks.

Opus enables organisations to discover, build, run, optimise, and govern agentic workflows, with a persistent enterprise memory layer that turns each deployment into compounding institutional intelligence. The platform is model-agnostic, orchestrates work across existing enterprise systems, and is designed for business stakeholders, not only technical teams, to own and evolve the workflows that run their operations, reflecting a broader shift toward putting AI capability in the hands of the people closest to the work.

The collaboration combines McKinsey's domain and change management expertise, and Quantum Black's technical depth with Opus' capabilities to help clients rapidly re-imagine and deploy agentic enterprise workflows. Under the collaboration, McKinsey leads the identification and reimagination of high-friction workflows, engaging business and technical stakeholders in new ways made possible through Opus, and embeds the governance and operating model changes required to run agentic systems at scale. AppliedAI provides the platform on which those reimagined workflows are built, deployed, and continuously improved. The combined offering is designed to accelerate time-to-value and lift the return on agentic process transformation.

"Our collaboration with AppliedAI addresses the need for an agentic solution for mid and back-office workflows. It also introduces new tools that support the enterprise AI roadmap, rapidly uncovers business requirements and re-imagines workflows that accelerate our AI efforts. This gives clients a governed, auditable path from transformation strategy to operational workflow in weeks not months," says Ben Ellencweig, Global Lead for QuantumBlack Partnerships and Alliances, McKinsey & Company.

Demonstrated impact

In a joint deployment with a leading European chemicals manufacturer operating under stringent regulatory requirements, McKinsey and AppliedAI used Opus to transform a vendor onboarding process that had been manual, slow, and error-prone, with data fragmented across systems and progress dependent on repeated follow-ups. By automating data capture, compliance checks, and counterparty communications, the joint effort delivered:

The collaboration is designed to repeat this pattern at scale across regulated industries: identify the workflows where friction is most expensive, reimagine them with the process owners who run them, and rapidly deploy governed agentic processes into production.

"Enterprises spend trillions globally on work that is necessary but procedural. We built Opus from first principles for the agentic enterprise, turning decades of process knowledge, trapped in documents, tribal memory, and legacy systems, into governed, production-ready workflows in minutes. Partnering with McKinsey is how we bring that reimagination to regulated industries at the scale they actually need, from financial services in New York and London to industrials in Frankfurt to sovereign-scale programmes in the Gulf."

— Arya Bolurfrushan, Founder and CEO, AppliedAI

"The AI transformations are often launched with a large ambition. But ambition without execution creates frustration, not value. This collaboration delivers what our clients are asking for: a way to rewire their operations with AI that is governed, auditable, fast. It brings AI to the P&L of the organisations."

— Abdellah Iftahy, Senior Partner, McKinsey & Company; EEMA Business Building Practice Leader, Middle East

About AppliedAI

AppliedAI is the UAE's AI champion and a global enterprise AI company building Opus, the Agentic Process Execution (APX) platform that lets regulated enterprises discover, build, run, and optimise governed agentic workflows. Headquartered in Abu Dhabi, AppliedAI serves clients across the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Learn more at opus.com.

About McKinsey & Company

McKinsey is a global management consulting firm committed to helping organizations accelerate sustainable and inclusive growth. We work with clients across the private, public, and social sectors to solve complex problems and create positive change for all their stakeholders. We combine bold strategies and transformative technologies to help organizations innovate more sustainably, achieve lasting gains in performance, and build workforces that will thrive for this generation and the next. Visit www.mckinsey.com for more.

McKinsey has a financial interest linked to the performance of AppliedAI. This press release is for informational purposes only and is not - and may not be relied on in any manner as - legal, tax, or investment advice or as an offer to sell or as solicitation of an offer to buy any interest in any member of the AppliedAI corporate group.

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AppliedAI and McKinsey & Company collaborate to rapidly rewire regulated enterprise processes with AI