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  • Google Cloud and Accenture launch Generative AI Center of Excellence in Saudi Arabia

    Google Cloud and Accenture are extending their pan-global Generative AI collaboration into the Saudi market, launching their latest Center of Excellence in the Kingdom’s capital city. First launched late 2023 in the US, the Generative AI Center of Excellence of Accenture and Google Cloud provides businesses with the industry expertise, technical knowledge, and product resources to build and scale applications using Google Cloud’s generative AI portfolio and accelerate time-to-value. Fast forward to today, and Accenture and Google Cloud have setup over a dozen such Generative AI Center of Excellences, including in New York, London, Bengaluru, and Sydney. Now, Saudi Arabia has been unveiled as the next location (and first in the Middle East), with the initiative set to provide a major boost to the Kingdom’s generative AI scene.

  • Salesforce pledges $500 million investments in Saudi Arabia

    Salesforce today announced plans to invest $500 million in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, building on its commitment to innovation and economic growth in the region. The investment also aims to spur workforce development through AI skilling and expand Salesforce's local partner ecosystem to support local businesses. The announcement, made today at LEAP 2025, follows the company's Davos pledge to expand its presence in Saudi Arabia with new regional headquarters in Riyadh. The increasing adoption of Agentforce, Salesforce's digital labor platform, by businesses in the region underscores the growing demand for AI-driven solutions and reinforces Salesforce's commitment to this technology in the Kingdom.

  • Saudi Arabia Gears Up to Host the Fourth Edition of the Saudi Media Forum 2025

    The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is gearing up to host the fourth edition of the Saudi Media Forum 2025, set to take place in the capital, Riyadh, from February 19 to 21. This prestigious event reaffirms its status as the largest media gathering in the region and a global platform that unites top decision-makers, industry experts, and innovators in the media sector.

  • Saudi Arabia emerges as the epicentre of Media & Entertainment in 2025

    According to a January 2025 Statista report, Saudi Arabia leads the MENA media industry, holding a dominant 30% market share. This month Saudi Arabia appears to be the hub for everyone in Media & Entertainment, with Leap, followed by the Future of Media Exhibition (FOMEX) from February 19-21, and the BroadcastPro Summit KSA on February 25. We will have a stand at FOMEX too and look forward to meeting many of you there. It’s that final burst of activity before everything calms down for Ramadan – or will it?

  • Saudi Arabia could rank as Europe’s 5th largest tech hub if in EU: Minister

    Abdullah Al-Swaha, Minister of Communications and Information Technology, said Saudi Arabia could have ranked the fifth-largest tech hub in Europe if part of the European Union (EU). Speaking at LEAP 25 Conference, the minister emphasized that attracting top thinkers, major investors, and innovators from around the world would drive progress not only for Saudi Arabia but also for the region and the entire world. He highlighted the Kingdom's ongoing efforts to mitigate challenges related to skills, digitization, and governance.

  • Groq opens EMEA’s largest AI computer centre in Saudi Arabia

    Jonathan Ross, CEO of Groq today announced the opening of the AI inference leader’s second GroqCloud region and Europe, Middle East and Africa’s largest AI inferencing center in Dammam, backed by $1.5 billion investment in Saudi Arabia. Speaking on the main stage of LEAP 2025 in the company of Tareq Amin, former CEO of Aramco Digital and H.E. Abdullah Alswaha Minister of Communications and Information Technology, Ross confirmed that the GroqCloud is now live running on 19,000 Groq LPUs (language processing units). The new AI infrastructure hub was built in partnership with Aramco Digital and with the financial backing of Aramco . Amin emphasised that the GroqCloud service was not being priced at a premium and Saudi Arabia now has the lowest cost for inferencing AI models in the world.

  • Arab states slam Netanyahu over suggestion to move Palestinians to Saudi Arabia

    Arab governments have slammed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's remarks that a Palestinian state should be established in Saudi Arabia. Netanyahu – wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza – suggested earlier this week that Palestinians should be moved to Saudi Arabia which has "a lot of land," calling a Palestinian state a "security threat" to Israel. Riyadh quickly rebuffed the Israeli leader's comments in a foreign ministry statement, reiterating that normalisation with Israel would only be possible if an independent Palestinian state was established. Netanyahu and his far-right government have outright rejected a Palestinian state, which many Palestinians want to see include the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank, with occupied East Jerusalem as its capital. The comments came amid Netanyahu's visit to Washington this week, where he appeared alongside US President Donald Trump, who unveiled a controversial plan to "take over" Gaza and displace millions of Palestinians

  • Influencers’ role in helping Saudi Arabia end the scourge of smoking

    A recent forecast by Euromonitor International suggests that cigarette consumption in Saudi Arabia will hold steady this year. The research firm also predicts that the market for vapes, heated tobacco, and smokeless tobacco is about to explode, quintupling in size by 2028.[1] Given that up to one in three young Saudi adults is thought to use e-cigarettes, this comes as no surprise. In short, smoking remains stubbornly popular in the Kingdom, as does vaping among young adults. Bending the curve will require the adoption and skillful deployment of social media influencer techniques that better align with how our youth absorb information.  The good news is that any such effort can – and should – build on the laudable stop-smoking efforts ongoing in the Kingdom. Since launching its first anti-smoking campaign in the early 2000s, the Kingdom has banned smoking in public places, imposed a 100% duty on cigarettes, and set up more than 1,000 smoking cessation clinics across the country.[2] Last year, the Public Investment Fund launched Badael, which sells Saudi-made nicotine pouches and is developing other tobacco alternatives for smokers. These policies, among many others, have been overwhelmingly successful.

  • Saudi Arabia’s population surges 4.7% to 35.3M in H1 2024

    Saudi Arabia's population grew at an annual rate of 4.7% to stand at 35.3 million by the end of the first half of 2024. In 2024, Saudi residents exceeded a tally of 19.6 million, while non-Saudi residents totaled approximately 15.7 million, a recent bulletin from the General Authority for Statistics (GASTAT) reported. According to the GASTAT’s estimates, the Saudi population growth reached about 1.6 million people compared to mid-2023, when the growth rate amounted to about 33.7 million people. Saudis accounted for 24.4% of this increase, while males made up roughly 70.8% of the total population growth. The number of Saudis grew by approximately 389,300 people compared to 2023, while the non-Saudi population added around 1.21 million.

  • Characterization of paleodrainages in desert regions of Saudi Arabia multisatellite images with field based study

    In Saudi Arabia, a number of linear geomorphological features with uncertain origin have been observed from space, but they do not belong to any existed drainage systems. They are ancient watercourses carried water in the past during the Holocene deluge, and they were affected by global climate change and geological processes turning them into dry and buried channels filled by sediments, and these are described as “Paleodrainages”.