Technology Editor, Gulf Business Review
Rami Haddad covers Gulf technology, artificial intelligence, cloud infrastructure and startups, testing investment announcements against capacity, customers and commercial deployment.
The beat is reported from official statistics, regulator publications, company filings and named institutional research. Forecasts, commitments and completed outcomes are labelled separately.
Rami's technology beat is organised around the difference between announced ambition and usable infrastructure. AI partnerships, cloud regions, data-centre capacity and startup funding are tracked by stage, with disclosed megawatts, customers and service availability preferred to broad programme claims.
He also follows the capital structure behind the Gulf's technology build-out. Sovereign institutions, strategic companies and international partners can play different roles in financing, ownership and delivery, so his reporting keeps those responsibilities visible rather than treating every participant as the operator.
A Gulf Business Review survey of 3,384 respondents finds Saudi Arabia leads on AI capital and expected 2035 industry scale, while the UAE leads on AI talent.
Saudi Arabia built the East-West Pipeline to reduce dependence on Hormuz. The system has preserved export flexibility during the Iran war, but attacks on the pipeline and surging Red Sea insurance costs show that redundancy reduces risk rather than eliminating it.
The UAE is reportedly revising the physical design of its giant AI campus after regional attacks, adding resilience and geographic distribution to the usual questions of chips, power and cooling.
GBR survey data show AI is reducing hiring needs for some roles even as most respondents expect total headcount to rise, pointing to job redesign rather than a simple employment collapse.
Saudi Arabia has shut the East-West oil pipeline after a drone attack. The route recently carried 4 to 5 million barrels a day and helped bypass Hormuz shipping disruption.
The UAE is redesigning its 5GW AI data centre project after Iranian attacks, considering distributed sites, blast-resistant construction and underground components.
The UAE and Saudi Arabia are investing heavily in AI infrastructure. We examine what frontier-AI safety concerns mean for Gulf compute, diversification and technology strategy.
A practical guide to comparing Gulf data-centre projects without double-counting announced megawatts, phased campuses or operating IT load.
A guide to the operators, developers, cloud providers and sovereign-backed platforms shaping data-centre and AI infrastructure across the GCC.
A practical guide to sovereign cloud, public cloud regions and regulated workloads across Gulf markets, including why data residency alone does not define sovereignty.
Marlan Space and Loft Orbital are leading a $1 billion AI satellite project with an initial 50-satellite constellation. We examine the UAE industrial angle.
A maintained Gulf data-centre project database tracking country, developer, announced scale, current stage, evidence date and next verifiable milestone.
A sourced tracker of Saudi Arabia's major cloud and AI data-centre projects, separating announced, under-construction and customer-ready capacity.
A status guide to major hyperscale cloud regions across the GCC, distinguishing live regions from announced or forthcoming infrastructure.
A permanent guide to Saudi Arabia's data-centre and AI-infrastructure buildout, including HUMAIN, DataVolt, AWS and the difference between announced, under-construction and operating capacity.
A permanent guide to the UAE's major AI and data-centre projects, including Stargate UAE, Khazna and the wider Abu Dhabi AI infrastructure ecosystem.
A guide to hyperscaler cloud regions across Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and the wider Gulf, and why a cloud region is not the same thing as an AI data-centre campus.
PwC forecasts $1.1 trillion of Middle East data-centre capex through 2050. We examine Saudi Arabia, the UAE, power, GPU supply and the risks behind the forecast.
A stage-based look at Gulf AI infrastructure that has moved beyond announcement, including Stargate UAE and HUMAIN-DataVolt at Oxagon.
A sourced comparison of UAE and Saudi AI infrastructure in 2026, separating operating cloud regions, projects under construction and long-term announced capacity.
A sourced comparison of the Gulf's largest AI infrastructure projects, including Stargate UAE, DataVolt Oxagon and the AWS-HUMAIN AI Zone in Saudi Arabia.
MBZUAI's IFM released six K2 Horizon AI models from 0.9B to 375B parameters with weights, code and training information. Here is what makes the release different.
Saudi Arabia's data-centre investment pipeline, including AWS, HUMAIN, MIS and major announced projects, with planned, under-construction and operating capacity kept separate.
HUMAIN and DataVolt are developing 100MW of AI data-centre capacity at Oxagon within a larger phased campus. See the project stage, capacity definitions and next milestones.
Saudi Arabia is assembling a large AI infrastructure pipeline. The useful question is not the announced gigawatts, but which sites are financed, under construction and close to taking live workloads.
The Red Sea project turns part of Saudi Arabia's AI infrastructure ambition into a defined first phase, but 100MW should not be confused with the Kingdom's much larger long-term targets.
The UAE is building around an international hyperscale cluster and an established cloud base. Saudi Arabia is combining new national champions with a larger domestic market and an expanding infrastructure pipeline.
The Gulf AI buildout is being carried by a small group of companies with very different roles, from data-centre ownership and cloud platforms to sovereign AI and project development.
The Gulf has abundant energy resources, but large AI campuses create concentrated electricity loads that still require generation, transmission and local grid connections to arrive on time.
National regulators, free-zone frameworks and product permissions remain distinct despite regional expansion plans.
The more important shift is the software, data and financing layer forming around a larger electronic-payment base.
Regulatory access lowers the first barrier; recurring customers and regional distribution determine whether startups become durable businesses.
Announced megawatts describe intended capacity; energised halls and contracted workloads describe the operating market.
Abu Dhabi is attracting global AI companies through sovereign infrastructure, large institutional buyers, production deployments and capital partnerships.
Saudi and UAE AI infrastructure is increasingly financed through sovereign capital, hyperscaler investment and specialist data-centre partnerships.
Weekly transactions show payment activity by sector and city, not retail volumes, profits or the entire consumer economy.
Stargate UAE is planned as a 1GW AI infrastructure campus in Abu Dhabi with OpenAI, G42, Oracle, Nvidia, Cisco and SoftBank. What the project means for Gulf AI capacity.
Ma'aden reported SAR38.6 billion of 2025 revenue and SAR7.35 billion of net profit, up 156%. Record phosphate production and stronger commodity prices moved Saudi mining further from strategic promise toward operating scale.
Abu Dhabi is scaling AI across government through production use cases, Microsoft Copilot, sovereign cloud and structured governance.
Ma'aden and MP Materials agreed to explore a mine-to-magnet rare-earth supply chain in Saudi Arabia. The proposal moved the Kingdom's mining strategy toward materials essential to defence, electronics and electrification.
Italy's SACE was reported to provide guarantees covering 80% of up to $3 billion in loans connected to NEOM. The structure showed how Saudi megaproject financing can be linked to foreign suppliers and national export policy.
EDGE and Fincantieri formalised MAESTRAL, a 51%-EDGE joint venture aimed at a roughly €30 billion commercial pipeline, then announced a €400 million UAE Coast Guard order for ten offshore patrol vessels.
NEOM secured a SAR10 billion revolving credit facility from nine Saudi banks, adding flexible corporate liquidity to earlier project-specific financings. The facility showed the megaproject beginning to build a more conventional capital structure.
PIF agreed to acquire 51% of TAWAL at a $5.85 billion enterprise value and combine it with GLIC. stc would retain 43.06% of the enlarged tower company, converting a controlled subsidiary into a strategic minority holding.
EDGE acquired 50% of Brazilian smart-weapons specialist SIATT, linking the UAE group to the MANSUP anti-ship missile programme. The deal showed that international expansion would be built through local industrial capability rather than exports alone.
The listing of solutions by stc separated systems integration, cloud and enterprise technology from the parent telecom operator and created a public-market benchmark for Saudi digital services.