Riyadh Daily spoke with Feras A. Al-Alshaikh, Regional Director, Saudi Arabia, North Gulf and Levant, Red Hat, about the challenges facing Saudi organisations as they scale artificial intelligence, and how companies can pursue AI adoption while meeting local regulatory and digital sovereignty requirements.
Q1: What is the biggest challenge for Saudi companies when scaling AI across the organisation?
As Artificial Intelligence (AI) continues to evolve at a rapid pace, one of the biggest challenges for organisations is keeping pace with technological developments while building skills and capabilities needed to adopt AI effectively at scale. Companies need to remain agile in evaluating and adopting new AI technologies and ensure they have access to the right talent and expertise.
At Red Hat, we are committed to supporting latest developments in AI while investing in initiatives that help strengthen AI capabilities and skills across the Kingdom. This includes academic and training initiatives, such as our recent collaborations with the Saudi Digital Academy and Duweg Academy, to help nurture AI-related skills in the local market.
This is especially significant as AI continues to play a pivotal role in Saudi Vision 2030. We remain committed to supporting the Kingdom’s digital transformation by helping organisations build the technology capabilities, skills and expertise required to scale AI adoption and drive long-term innovation.
Q2: How does Red Hat help Saudi companies use AI while meeting local regulations?
Digital sovereignty is a highly important priority in Saudi Arabia, as organisations accelerate their AI adoption. At Red Hat, we aim to help organisations adopt new technologies that meet the requirements of their digital environments while ensuring compliance with the nation’s regulatory policies.
As AI is a major focus of Saudi Vision 2030, we are supporting this progress through our regional as well as local teams. Since establishing our regional headquarters in Saudi Arabia in 2024, we have collaborated with organisations across the government, public and private sectors.
Our approach is based on providing organisations with open technologies, expertise and local support required to advance their AI and broader digital transformation journeys. Through these efforts, we seek to contribute towards realising the ambitious goals of Saudi Vision 2030.
Source: Riyadh Daily