The Kingdom’s second day focused on the data centers, cloud services, connectivity, local manufacturing and industrial systems needed to turn its AI ambitions into operational capacity. 

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Riyadh’s AI push is starting to look less like a race to buy computing power and more like an attempt to build an industry around it. Organizers put the day’s announcements at around $2.5 billion across data centers, cloud services, technology localization and research and development. The announcements moved from locally manufactured servers and new data centers to telecom R&D, cloud investment and African connectivity. 

HPE put its latest ProLiant Generation 12 technology into a Saudi production line and expanded its locally produced portfolio to include storage, while its relationship with alfanar is moving beyond assembly into manufacturing and integration services, with HPE saying the arrangement will triple annual local capacity. HPE, Intel and Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology also launched the Saudi Made, Developed, Deployed initiative, connecting locally produced infrastructure with Saudi-developed software and local deployment capabilities. HPE is planning a Saudi Innovation Center where customers, startups and technology partners can test and validate solutions, with the program targeting around 15 Saudi made, developed and deployed technologies by the end of the year. Mohammad Alrehaili, HPE’s Vice President and Managing Director for the Middle East, described the facility as its “sovereignty kitchen.” 

Nokia is extending that localization into the network layer, with a global R&D hub in Riyadh focused on service management and orchestration, self-organizing networks, Autopilot and rApps. The project follows discussions between its leadership and the Saudi communications ministry earlier this year and will develop AI enabled network automation for Saudi operators and enterprises as well as customers beyond the Kingdom, while creating local engineering roles and connecting Saudi talent with Nokia’s wider development work. 

Underneath the expanding network layer, MIS said its Saudi Data Center Fund has moved from five data centers in 2022 to 32MW operating today, with 144MW committed and a 192MW platform ambition. Around SAR 5 billion has been committed across the program, with MIS responsible for developing, designing and operating the facilities. 

NHC Innovation is adding another major block of capacity in northern Riyadh through Khuzam Digital Valley. Eng. Marwan AlZamil, Chief Digital Officer at NHC Innovation, presented the project targeting 65MW of IT load by 2033, with 100MW of total capacity planned for the third phase of its data center development. The project is backed by a roughly SAR 3 billion investment in the Day Two presentation, while additional project material puts the total investment at SAR 3.3 billion, or about $880 million, across a site of nearly 200,000 square meters. BytePlus and NAVER Innovation have signed as the project’s first anchor customers. 

Cloud services are now being built around that growing capacity. Mobily and BytePlus, ByteDance’s enterprise cloud and AI arm, announced a joint investment of more than $150 million, around SAR 560 million, to bring BytePlus cloud services into the Kingdom. Mobily is contributing data center capacity and national and international subsea connectivity, positioning itself as a regional AI cloud provider for content and gaming. 

Beyond the Kingdom, WIOCC Group announced a $300 million investment from Africa Finance Corporation and Vision Invest to expand its African digital infrastructure. Group CEO Chris Wood said WIOCC has invested more than $900 million over 18 years, has offices in 15 countries and 40 data centers, while its network reaches more than 30 African countries. The new capital will expand data center capacity, terrestrial fiber and subsea infrastructure to support AI compute and inference. WIOCC said it wants to transport AI inference built in Saudi Arabia into African markets. 

Microsoft and HUMAIN are taking the infrastructure into enterprise deployment, bundling HUMAIN One with Copilot, placing ALLaM and other HUMAIN models on Microsoft Foundry, and putting engineers jointly inside enterprises. An AI PC running Windows becomes available to enterprises through alfanar from 20 September. 

The industrial test is already under way 

Aramco said it expects its digital workforce to grow to more than 20 specialized digital engineers by the end of 2026, working alongside human engineers in gas processing, advanced process control and reliability. In one multi agent maintenance application, Aramco reported up to a 40% reduction in planning time and projected annual maintenance cost reductions of 15% to 20%. Its own reporting confirms that AI-driven solutions generated SAR 9.8 billion, or $2.6 billion, in Technology Realized Value during 2025, roughly half of the company’s total technology related value for the year.  

Aramco Digital made the day’s product launch. Dr. Ashraf AlTahini, its chief executive, unveiled iCONNA, an industrial AI ecosystem built on the national 450MHz industrial communications network the company has operated since licensing at the end of 2024 and which now serves more than 35 clients. It brings together mission critical connectivity, edge industrial IoT, rugged devices and an AI software marketplace, in a stack AlTahini described as sovereign by design and secure down to the device. 

Walid Al Naeem, Aramco’s Engineering Vice President and Chief Engineer, noted that AI agents can work in parallel across large volumes of operational data, but experienced engineers remain responsible for judgment and accountability. 

“The technology industry often talks about the 10X engineer. Our vision goes further, a 10X engineering team.” said Walid Al Naeem, Engineering Vice President and Chief Engineer, Aramco 

“In industrial operations, almost right is not good enough. Safety has no shortcut. Industrial autonomy must therefore be engineered and earned.” stated Walid Al Naeem, Engineering Vice President and Chief Engineer, Aramco 

Turning capacity into deployment 

At an enterprise AI panel, Burcak Soydan, NTT Data’s Managing Executive for the Middle East, said a global survey of about 2,000 IT leaders found that only one in five AI pilots reaches production. One Saudi banking project took six weeks to reach production even though the AI solution took only two weeks to build, with the remaining time going into process redesign, compliance, security and training. He described the economics as a $1, $2, $3, $4 rule. For every dollar spent implementing AI, another two dollars may be needed for change management, three for the surrounding technology ecosystem and four for data readiness.  

The same questions of talent, sovereignty and infrastructure surfaced during a Digital Cooperation Organization ministerial panel. Syria’s Minister of Communications and Information Technology, Abdul Salam Haykal, described Syria’s participation at LEAP as “part of a nation's return” and argued that digital sovereignty should mean having choices rather than isolating a country from the outside world. 

“People do not leave countries, people do not leave companies, people leave environments.” said H.E. Shaza Fatima Khawaja, Federal Minister for IT and Telecommunications, Pakistan 

Cross-border structure was the subject of a Middle East–Asia investment panel. Khalid Al Shaikh, chief executive of SCCC by stc, said Alibaba Cloud never entered Saudi Arabia directly because the barrier was never technology. SCCC exists as a joint vehicle with stc and EW Partners to supply localization, compliance and sovereignty, which he said let Alibaba Cloud reach the market in a fraction of the usual time. ACES group chief executive Dr. Akram Abaras said his firm signs 25-year digital infrastructure contracts, including in India, and will not enter a market without regulation protecting an asset of that length. Haykal pointed to Silk Link, stc’s investment in a terrestrial route through Syria connecting the region to Europe, as evidence that regional integration is an executable investment proposition. 

The first 10MW at Khuzam Digital Valley is already under implementation, while HPE, Nokia, Mobily, Microsoft, HUMAIN and Aramco are moving different parts of the stack into deployment. The next milestone is getting that capacity into production and proving what it can support. 

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