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China's Huawei Opens Cloud Data Center in Saudi Arabia

Officials at the summit in Riyadh. (Asharq Al-Awsat)
Officials at the summit in Riyadh. (Asharq Al-Awsat)
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China's Huawei Opens Cloud Data Center in Saudi Arabia

Officials at the summit in Riyadh. (Asharq Al-Awsat)
Officials at the summit in Riyadh. (Asharq Al-Awsat)

Huawei Cloud announced on Monday the launch of the Huawei Cloud Riyadh Region to grow the company’s footprint in the Middle East and North Africa.

The announcement was made at the Huawei Cloud Summit Saudi Arabia 2023.

The event was sponsored by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) in Saudi Arabia and organized by the company to promote digital transformation in line with Saudi Vision 2030.

The summit was attended by Eng. Haitham bin Abdul Rahman Al-Ohali, Vice Minister at the MCIT, Steven Yi, the company's regional president, and other officials from the ministry and company, as well as international and regional entrepreneurs in business and technology.

During the opening ceremony, Huawei announced the launch of the Huawei Cloud Riyadh Region, which will contribute to the emergence of a new era of digital-led economic growth and prosperity.

This launch is in line with Huawei Cloud’s plans to invest heavily in cloud infrastructure in Saudi Arabia.

"Huawei is a proud partner in our country's technological progress having worked with the Ministry, service providers, enterprises, and universities in various collective efforts towards digital transformation,” said Al-Ohali.

The cloud data center in Riyadh, Huawei's 30th worldwide, will support government services for the Kingdom and allow for AI applications and language models in Arabic, a company official told a briefing.

"The implementation of Huawei cloud is not just about us, but is a bridge that will bring other Chinese companies to Saudi Arabia," said Steven Yi, the company's regional president.

The step would contribute to the development of the country's digital economy, he said, adding that Huawei opened its regional headquarters in the Saudi capital this year.

Under the them “Advance Intelligence for Saudi Arabia,” the summit highlighted Huawei Cloud's commitment to the Kingdom’s digital future.

The event provided an ideal platform for exchanging knowledge and building relationships and cooperation, encouraging national and international companies to share success stories, best practices, and insights into the digital transformation process.

Saudi Arabia has previously said it would not sign contracts with foreign companies that did not have regional headquarters in the Kingdom after this year.

Huawei ranked fifth in the global cloud services market in the first quarter, with a market share of 2.4%, although it was the second-largest vendor in mainland China, according to research consultancy Canalys.

In February Huawei said it would invest $400 million in the Saudi Arabia cloud region over the next five years.

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Technology

Apple, Google Send New Round of Cyber Threat Notifications to Users Around World

The Apple logo is seen in this illustration taken September 24, 2025. (Reuters)
The Apple logo is seen in this illustration taken September 24, 2025. (Reuters)
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Apple, Google Send New Round of Cyber Threat Notifications to Users Around World

The Apple logo is seen in this illustration taken September 24, 2025. (Reuters)
The Apple logo is seen in this illustration taken September 24, 2025. (Reuters)

Apple and Google have sent a new round of cyber threat notifications to users around the world, the companies said this week, announcing their latest effort to insulate customers against surveillance threats.

Apple and the Alphabet-owned Google are two of several tech companies that regularly issue warnings to users when they determine they may have been targeted by state-backed hackers.

Apple said the warnings were issued on Dec. 2 but gave few further details about the alleged hacking activity and did not address questions about the number of users targeted or say who was thought to be conducting the surveillance.

Apple said that "to date we have notified users in over 150 countries in total."

Apple's statement follows Google's Dec. 3 announcement that it was warning all known users targeted using Intellexa spyware, which it said spanned "several hundred accounts across various countries, including Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Angola, Egypt, Uzbekistan, Saudi Arabia, and Tajikistan."

Google said in its announcement that Intellexa, a cyber intelligence company that is sanctioned by the US government, was "evading restrictions and thriving."

Executives tied to Intellexa did not immediately return messages.

Previous waves of warnings have triggered headlines and prompted investigations by government bodies, including the European Union, whose senior officials have previously been targeted using spyware.

Threat notifications impose costs on cyber spies by alerting victims, said John Scott-Railton, a researcher with the Canadian digital watchdog group Citizen Lab.

He said they were "also often the first step in a string of investigations and discoveries that can lead to real accountability around spyware abuses."

Technology

AI Bubble to Be Short-lived, Rebound Stronger, NTT DATA Chief Says

FILE PHOTO: Figurines with computers and smartphones are seen in front of the words "Artificial Intelligence AI" in this illustration taken, February 19, 2024. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: Figurines with computers and smartphones are seen in front of the words "Artificial Intelligence AI" in this illustration taken, February 19, 2024. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
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AI Bubble to Be Short-lived, Rebound Stronger, NTT DATA Chief Says

FILE PHOTO: Figurines with computers and smartphones are seen in front of the words "Artificial Intelligence AI" in this illustration taken, February 19, 2024. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: Figurines with computers and smartphones are seen in front of the words "Artificial Intelligence AI" in this illustration taken, February 19, 2024. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo

A potential artificial intelligence bubble will deflate faster than past tech cycles but give way to an even stronger rebound as corporate adoption catches up with infrastructure spending, the head of Japanese IT company NTT DATA Inc. said.

Despite worries around supply chains, the direction of travel is clear, CEO Abhijit Dubey said in an interview with the Reuters Global Markets Forum.

"There is absolutely no doubt that in the medium- to long-term, AI is a massive secular trend," he said.

"Over the next 12 months, I think we're going to have a bit of a normalization ... It'll be a short-lived bubble, and (AI) will come out of it stronger."

With demand for compute still running ahead of supply, "supply chains are almost spoken for" over the next two to three years, he said. Pricing power is already tilting toward chipmakers and hyperscalers, mirroring their stretched valuations in public markets, he added.

AI has triggered the biggest technological shake-up since the advent of the internet, fueling trillions of dollars of investment and eye-watering equity gains. But it has caused shortages of memory chips, drawn regulatory scrutiny, and created growing unease over the future of work.

Dubey, who is also the firm's chief AI officer, said his company has begun rethinking recruitment strategies as AI reshapes labor markets.

"There will clearly be an impact ... Over a five- to 25-year horizon, there will likely be dislocation," he said. However, he added that NTT DATA continues to hire across locations.

Speakers at the Reuters NEXT conference in New York discussed how AI may upend work and job growth.

AI startup Writer Inc.'s CEO May Habib said customers are focused on slowing headcount growth.

"You close a customer, you get on the phone with the CEO to kick off the project, and it's like, 'Great, how soon can I whack 30% of my team?'," she said.

Still, a PwC survey of the global workforce released in November suggests the reality of generative AI usage has yet to match boardroom expectations.

Daily use of GenAI remains "significantly lower" than widely touted by executives, PwC said, even as workers with AI skills commanded an average wage premium of 56% — more than double last year's figure.

PwC also flagged a widening skills gap, with about half of non-managers reporting access to training resources, compared with roughly three-quarters of senior executives.

Technology

EU Launches Antitrust Probe into Meta over Use of AI in WhatsApp

FILE - Attendees visit the Meta booth at the Game Developers Conference 2023 in San Francisco on March 22, 2023. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)
FILE - Attendees visit the Meta booth at the Game Developers Conference 2023 in San Francisco on March 22, 2023. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)
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EU Launches Antitrust Probe into Meta over Use of AI in WhatsApp

FILE - Attendees visit the Meta booth at the Game Developers Conference 2023 in San Francisco on March 22, 2023. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)
FILE - Attendees visit the Meta booth at the Game Developers Conference 2023 in San Francisco on March 22, 2023. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)

Brussels has opened a new antitrust investigation into Meta Platforms over its rollout of artificial intelligence features in WhatsApp, the European Commission said on Thursday, reflecting rising scrutiny of Big Tech's use of generative AI.

The move, reported earlier by Reuters and the Financial Times, marks the latest action by European regulators against large technology firms as the bloc seeks to balance support for the sector with efforts to curb its expanding influence.

The European Commission opened the investigation into "Meta's new policy regarding AI providers' access to WhatsApp" after the California-based company integrated its Meta AI system into the messaging service earlier this year.

A WhatsApp spokesperson said that "the claims are baseless", adding that the emergence of chatbots on its platforms "puts a strain on our systems that they were not designed to support".

"Even still, the AI space is highly competitive and people have access to the services of their choice in any number of ways, including app stores, search engines, email services, partnership integrations, and operating systems."

Meta AI, a chatbot and virtual assistant, has been built into WhatsApp's interface since March 2025 across European markets.

Italy's antitrust watchdog opened a parallel investigation in July into allegations that Meta leveraged its market power by integrating an AI tool into WhatsApp. The probe was expanded in November to examine whether Meta further abused its dominance by blocking rival AI chatbots from the messaging platform.

The FT, citing officials, said that the EU probe will be conducted under traditional antitrust rules rather than the EU's Digital Markets Act, the bloc's landmark legislation currently used to scrutinize Amazon and Microsoft's cloud services for potential curbs.