RIYADH: Saudi Arabia is rapidly positioning itself as a global leader in artificial intelligence, according to senior executives from OpenText, one of the world’s largest enterprise information management companies.
Harald Adams, OpenText’s senior vice president of sales for international markets, said the Kingdom’s modernization drive is now setting a global benchmark.
“From my perspective, Saudi Arabia is not only leading the modernization towards artificial intelligence in the Middle East. I think it is leading it globally,” Adams told Arab News.
Speaking during the inauguration of OpenText’s new regional headquarters in Riyadh, Adams and George Schembri, vice president and general manager for the Middle East, highlighted the scale and pace of Saudi Arabia’s AI ambitions.
“For us, moving our MENA headquarters to Saudi Arabia was a strategic decision,” Adams said. “We believe innovation coming out of the Kingdom can be replicated not only across the region but globally.”
The new headquarters, located in the King Abdullah Financial District, will serve as a central hub for OpenText customers and partners across the Middle East. Its opening reflects a broader trend of global technology firms establishing regional bases in Riyadh.
Adams attributed Saudi Arabia’s leadership to deep financial resources, a unified national strategy, and exceptional execution speed.
“There are few governments globally moving as fast into AI modernization as Saudi Arabia. Not in the region, not even at a global level,” he said.
Schembri added that national-scale AI requires trusted and governed systems. “Saudi’s AI vision is one of the most ambitious in the world, and AI at this scale must be secure and trusted. This is where OpenText enables Saudi organizations to deliver on Vision 2030.”
He said the Kingdom’s focus on AI and digital transformation creates a powerful opportunity for organizations to unlock value from their information. “With OpenText on the ground in Riyadh, customers gain direct access to global expertise combined with local insight.”
The inauguration was attended by Canada’s Minister of International Trade and Economic Development Maninder Sidhu and Canada’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia Jean-Philippe Linteau. Sidhu highlighted strong alignment between Saudi Vision 2030 and Canada’s innovation goals.
Saudi Arabia’s AI ambitions are expected to contribute $235.2 billion, or 12.4 percent, to GDP by 2030. The Saudi Data and AI Authority, established in 2019, drives national AI strategy.
A flagship initiative, Humain, launched in May 2025 under the Public Investment Fund and chaired by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, aims to build a full AI stack—from data centers and cloud infrastructure to models and applications. The project targets 1.8 GW of data center capacity by 2030 and 100 GW of AI compute by 2026.
The Kingdom ranked fifth globally and first in the Arab region for AI growth in the 2025 Global AI Index, and third worldwide in advanced AI model development, behind only the US and China.
Education forms a central pillar of this strategy. From the 2025–26 academic year, AI will be taught across all public school grades, reaching around 6.7 million students.
OpenText executives said workforce development is a core part of their commitment.
“We’ve brought cloud to the Kingdom, opened our headquarters here, and are hiring Saudis,” Schembri said. “We’re building an ecosystem and developing programs with universities to prepare Saudi nationals for the workplace.”
“The younger generation will be working for us, our partners, or our customers,” Adams added. “That’s why we are fully committed to enabling them.”
