AWS, IBM, and HPE all announce investments in Saudi Arabia
Three of business tech’s biggest names have announced they’re stepping up their presence in Saudi Arabia.
AWS, IBM, and HP Enterprise (HPE) all announced investments in the kingdom at this year’s LEAP technology conference, held in the Saudi capital of Riyadh this month.
AWS
AWS used the event to unveil an upcoming infrastructure region in Saudi Arabia. Expected to go online in 2026, the region will have three availability zones – clusters of infrastructure designed to be geographically separate from each other in order to increase resilience.
Over the longer term, AWS plans to invest $5.3bn in the kingdom and has also announced an initiative to “help women jumpstart a career in cloud computing” that will give 4,000 women free classes on AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials. Around 22% of the Saudi labour market is female, according to data from the World Bank, with around one third of women in the kingdom aged 15-64 having a job, compared to around 82% of men.
The cloud giant is also setting up two new innovation centres in Saudi Arabia to help train startups in the region on AWS artificial intelligence and machine learning tech, as well as offering funding for graduate research.
HP Enterprise (HPE)
HPE has also unveiled its own Saudi efforts with the launch of the first ProLiant servers made in Riyadh. The company expects to produce “thousands of servers per year” from a facility in the Saudi city. Currently, DL360 and DL380 Gen 11 models are manufactured in the factory, with more hardware lines expected to be added going forward.
The facility is sponsored by the Saudi government and is a partnership between HPE and local manufacturer Alfanar. Discussions between the two companies are underway regarding increasing production further in the future, according to HPE.
IBM
IBM meanwhile used LEAP to talk up its ongoing work with Riyadh Air, the Saudi airline planned to launch next year. The airline is planning to use IBM technology such as Big Blue’s generative AI, including watsonx, and customer engagement offerings.
According to LEAP, over $13bn of investments were announced at the conference, with more than 215,000 people visiting the trade show, which is now in its third year.
The investments come against the background of the Saudi Vision 2030, a plan to diversify the kingdom’s economy by the start of the next decade. Under the plan, the kingdom will partner with tech and telecom companies to build out its IT infrastructure, as well as step up investments in “the digital economy” and increase the availability of e-government services.
The kingdom is thought to have the biggest IT market in the Middle East and North Africa region, valued at over $40bn in 2022.
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