In Saudi Arabia’s Year of AI, business leaders need trusted partners

Living and working in Riyadh gives you a perspective no market report can capture. The city feels different when it’s home: buildings rising where there were none weeks ago, conversations shifting from plans to delivery, and a growing sense that something historically significant is taking shape — something bold and distinctly Saudi.

I sense that promise in every conversation I have about AI with leaders of the region’s most ambitious organizations. But beneath the momentum and drive, there’s always the same question: How do we know who to trust?

Right now, it’s the most important question in Saudi Arabia’s AI market, and it deserves an honest answer.

The opportunities are clear; the partnerships, less so

Saudi Arabia now leads the world in public-sector AI adoption. It has declared 2026 the Year of AI, committed $9.1 billion to local AI companies and begun building what will become the world’s largest government-owned data center by capacity.

Leaders here don’t need the significance explained to them. They’re already planning how to move at the scale, pace and level of sovereignty that Vision 2030, the country’s economic transformation plan, calls for.

What they’re looking for is a different kind of partner — one that can be trusted to help them achieve their goals.

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Trust and longevity both matter in partnerships

As these leaders debate AI platforms and map out their digital transformation journeys, they also want to know whether a potential partner will stay the course when it gets difficult.

And it will get difficult. Every meaningful transformation hits a point where complexity overtakes the plan amid tightening timelines, forcing hard, unexpected choices. That’s where the line between a vendor and a partner becomes clear.

Leaders in Saudi Arabia have seen this play out before, and they choose their partners with that experience in mind.

What global technology firms keep getting wrong

Many global technology firms make the same misstep when they enter this market. They see Saudi Arabia as something to capture, not as something to serve.

Their announcements outpace what they can actually deliver. Executive visits generate headlines instead of lasting relationships. They arrive with energy, then pull back once the scale and complexity of Vision 2030 becomes real.

By contrast, some partners are already winning the mandates — and they have this in common: They were there early, before budgets were set, they were clear about what they could and couldn’t do, and they committed to supporting Vision 2030 as a national effort.

That kind of trust isn’t bought or built in a proposal.

The standard that Saudi Arabia deserves

Real partnership at this level of national ambition comes down to three things:

1. Showing up before the opportunity: Trust is built in working sessions, roundtables and candid conversations long before any formal process begins. These relationships exist before the contract and endure long after.
2. Delivering at Saudi scale: Ministries are digitalizing services for millions, energy companies are embedding AI into vast operations, and banks are modernizing under regulatory pressure. This is a place that demands partners who have done it before.
3. Sovereign capability — proven, not promised: Sovereignty isn’t a feature you switch on. It’s built into how systems are designed, governed and run, and it calls for strategic decisions about data governance, cybersecurity and operational continuity. The real test is simple: Has the partner already delivered and operated sovereign solutions at government scale, under full scrutiny?

How NTT DATA meets these requirements

We design and run sovereign AI infrastructure that keeps Saudi data within Saudi jurisdiction, backed by our work with governments and national institutions in more than 70 countries. We take responsibility for the full digital transformation journey, from strategy to delivery and day-to-day operations.

At a moment when many organizations are making defining decisions about enterprise resource planning, we also bring one of the world’s strongest SAP capabilities into Saudi Arabia. And our data centers meet both sides of the Vision 2030 mandate: performance at scale and sovereignty to a national standard.

NTT DATA has 190,000 professionals around the world and decades of experience behind us, but our presence in Saudi Arabia will ultimately be measured by what we build together — both in the Year of AI and in the years that follow.

How do you define real partnership? Let us know

For the Saudi ministers, board members and senior business leaders reading this, what would genuine partnership — at the level that Vision 2030 demands — look like to you?

I don’t mean the language in a proposal, but the substance behind it. What would you need to see, experience and verify over time, through delivery, before you believed it?

If you’re willing to share your perspective, email me your answer. I read every response personally; it helps us determine how we show up in this market and the standard to which we hold ourselves.

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