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Intel to Asharq Al-Awsat: Saudi Arabia’s Next Challenge Is Not Computing Power, but Turning It Into Economic Value

Intel believes the next phase in Saudi Arabia will be measured by the market’s ability to turn advanced computing into applications that generate real economic value (Adobe)
Intel believes the next phase in Saudi Arabia will be measured by the market’s ability to turn advanced computing into applications that generate real economic value (Adobe)
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Intel to Asharq Al-Awsat: Saudi Arabia’s Next Challenge Is Not Computing Power, but Turning It Into Economic Value

Intel believes the next phase in Saudi Arabia will be measured by the market’s ability to turn advanced computing into applications that generate real economic value (Adobe)
Intel believes the next phase in Saudi Arabia will be measured by the market’s ability to turn advanced computing into applications that generate real economic value (Adobe)

After 25 years in Saudi Arabia, Intel no longer views the local market in terms of processor demand or the number of users.

Instead, it is looking more closely at what is being built inside the Kingdom: artificial intelligence applications moving into production, locally assembled servers reaching regional markets, and Saudi talent shifting from using technology to developing it.

Taha Khalifa, Intel’s general manager for the Middle East and Africa, summed up that shift in an exclusive interview with Asharq Al-Awsat on the sidelines of the LEAP 2026 conference, saying the Kingdom’s relationship with technology had changed fundamentally.

Two decades ago, discussions largely centered on deploying technologies developed abroad. Today, the focus has shifted toward co-development in Saudi Arabia, involving Saudi engineers, local data and priorities linked to Vision 2030.

For Intel, the next phase will not be measured by the number of agreements or pilot projects, but by what actually reaches the market.

Over the next 12 to 24 months, the company says it wants to see solutions move from testing into production, clear figures from skills-development programs and early signs that computing infrastructure manufactured in Saudi Arabia is being exported to regional markets.

Among its programs, the Intel AI Digital Readiness initiative aims to reach 100,000 beneficiaries by 2030.

From Technology Supplier to Part of the Innovation Cycle

This change is directly reflected in the role Intel is seeking to play in the Saudi market. Rather than limiting itself to providing processors and ready-made solutions, the company says it is becoming involved at earlier stages of the innovation cycle, including designing technical architecture, optimizing models, enabling local developers and testing solutions before deployment.

Khalifa said partnerships in the Kingdom were no longer limited to supplying products, but had expanded to include co-development, local manufacturing, skills development and linking technology to the needs of priority sectors.

Intel sees this as moving the company from an external supplier to a more integrated local innovation ecosystem.

That approach is reflected in the Saudi Made, Developed, Deployed initiative launched by Intel, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology during LEAP 2026, hosted in Riyadh late last month.

The initiative brings together locally assembled servers powered by Intel Xeon 6 processors, Saudi-developed software and local talent to accelerate the development and validation of solutions before moving them toward commercial use.

Khalifa said the real test begins after development. The next stage requires selecting use cases in priority sectors, testing their technical and commercial viability, and then expanding their deployment across more companies.

Success, he said, will not be measured by the number of solutions developed, but by how many achieve sustainable commercial use.

Vision 2030 and Digital Sovereignty

Intel links these initiatives directly to the goals of Vision 2030, not only through technology localization, but also by connecting local manufacturing, skills development and technological innovation with economic diversification, stronger digital sovereignty and the creation of technology sectors capable of competing regionally and globally.

For the company, localization therefore means more than establishing production lines in the Kingdom. It also means building the capacity to develop local solutions, operate them commercially and then expand them beyond the Saudi market.

The same rationale underpins the planned Saudi Innovation Center in Riyadh. Khalifa identified three measures of its success: the number of solutions that move from testing to commercial deployment; the number of local companies and developers that use it to develop their products; and the ability of solutions hosted there to scale within Saudi Arabia and beyond.

From Local Production to Regional Exports

On the manufacturing side, HPE has begun producing Xeon 6-powered servers in Riyadh to meet demand in Saudi Arabia and some regional markets. Khalifa said local production was only the first step.

Building a stable export base would require sustained domestic demand to deliver economies of scale, as well as confidence in regional markets.

Early indicators are positive, he said, and if the current momentum continues, Saudi Arabia could become a regional hub for manufacturing advanced computing infrastructure in the coming years.

Khalifa also placed Lenovo’s unveiling of its first laptop manufactured in Saudi Arabia at LEAP 2026 within the same trend.

The company plans to expand local production in the coming months to include desktop computers, workstations and servers, supporting AI growth in Saudi Arabia, the Middle East and Africa.

Computing Capacity Is Not the Only Bottleneck

Despite the rapid expansion of data centers and computing capacity dedicated to AI, Intel does not believe Saudi Arabia’s next challenge will necessarily be a shortage of raw computing power.

Khalifa identified two more decisive factors: developing applications that generate real economic value and having skilled people able to operate the available infrastructure and build solutions on top of it.

Large-scale computing capacity is not enough if industries cannot turn it into commercially viable applications, or if there is insufficient talent to operate systems and develop models and solutions.

Intel, therefore, links its infrastructure support to skills-building programs and the development of the local innovation ecosystem.

Energy Enters the Equation

As AI expands, energy efficiency is becoming increasingly important. Khalifa said the question was no longer only how much computing capacity was available, but how much of it could be operated efficiently within available energy resources.

Intel is conducting research with Think AI to explore heterogeneous computing and metrics such as tokens per watt, which the company expects to play a growing role in government and corporate decisions on AI infrastructure.

Arabic AI: Dialects and Cost

For Arabic-language models, including HUMAIN’s ALLaM, Intel says the challenge goes beyond understanding Modern Standard Arabic. Models must also accurately handle differences in dialect and cultural context, both among Arab countries and within individual countries.

Operational efficiency poses an additional challenge. Large language models require substantial computing resources, making better performance per watt and lower inference costs priorities if the goal is to move the models from limited experimental settings to broad, sustainable use.

Some Intelligence Is Moving From the Cloud to Devices

Intel expects a growing share of AI workloads in Saudi Arabia to shift from the cloud to personal and edge devices, particularly for use cases that require immediate responses or local processing of sensitive data.

Khalifa pointed to intelligent assistants, document processing, meetings and cybersecurity applications as likely candidates for this shift.

Public safety and financial services also stand out because they require faster, local data processing. Intel’s collaboration with Mobily and iOmniscient on AI-powered video analytics for safer, more responsive cities is an example of this type of application.

Stc and the Shift to Specific Use Cases

Intel’s collaboration with stc Group is taking a similar path. A memorandum of understanding between the two companies covers the exploration of AI PCs, edge AI and hybrid AI, as well as next-generation data center infrastructure with improved energy efficiency.

The next stage begins with identifying clear use cases, including network analytics, predictive maintenance and local intelligent assistants, with the aim of improving productivity and business environments.

Khalifa said the biggest opportunity lay in enterprise AI. Given stc’s broad customer base and infrastructure, the company could become a channel for deploying AI solutions at scale across multiple sectors.

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Technology

Under Fire over AI, Effective Altruism Wants to Tell Its Own Story

Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei is considered a key figure in effective altruism’s early days, although he now denies any link. ANDREJ IVANOV / AFP
Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei is considered a key figure in effective altruism’s early days, although he now denies any link. ANDREJ IVANOV / AFP
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Under Fire over AI, Effective Altruism Wants to Tell Its Own Story

Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei is considered a key figure in effective altruism’s early days, although he now denies any link. ANDREJ IVANOV / AFP
Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei is considered a key figure in effective altruism’s early days, although he now denies any link. ANDREJ IVANOV / AFP

The effective altruism movement, which has close ties to the AI community and the companies leading the artificial intelligence boom, has drawn mainstream attention and accusations of cult-like behavior and alarmism.

The hard-to-define movement is still growing, and wants to better explain its values amid bitter criticism from the Trump administration and some powerful voices in Silicon Valley.

Its founding principle is to give money or time to major causes as effectively as possible, an intentionally dispassionate approach has at times been called out of touch, said AFP.

The New York Post called it a "wacky cult," the conservative Daily Caller dubbed it "The AI Doomsday Cartel," and a White House memo accused it of preferring the saving of "shrimp over families."

Once little known outside the tech world and some academic and political circles, effective altruism (EA) has been in the spotlight in recent weeks after a series of warnings about AI risks.

Those warnings were linked to EA. David Sacks, a venture capitalist and adviser to President Donald Trump, argued that organizations tied to EA are part of a "Doomer Industrial Complex" pushing for tougher AI regulation.

- 'Strange' ideas -

EA is deeply rooted in Silicon Valley and counts controlling AI's dangers among its priorities.

Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei is considered a key figure in EA's early days, although he now distances himself from the movement.

Anthropic president Daniela Amodei, Dario's sister, is married to Holden Karnofsky, an Anthropic employee and a leading EA proponent.

The movement has also influenced researchers and staff at other AI companies, including ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, particularly those working on AI safety.

The movement, which took shape about 15 years ago, is used to criticism.

Wealthy EA donors have often been accused of self-importance and of believing they alone know how best to give.

"Our ideas are just strange enough that people genuinely misinterpret them sometimes, and we can do a better job explaining how effective altruism approaches hard questions and tradeoffs," said Zachary Robinson, head of the Centre for Effective Altruism.

Robinson, whose organization supports the movement without directing it, sees the scrutiny since the summer as an opportunity to open up rather than retreat, because "people are curious to learn about us now."

After growing steadily until 2022, EA was badly damaged by the collapse of cryptocurrency platform FTX and its founder Sam Bankman-Fried, once the face of EA and later convicted of fraud.

After several difficult years, "We're on an up right now," Robinson said, pointing to attendance at the EA Global conference in New York in mid-October.

Like many at EA Global, Shanil Wijesinghe who works at a Canadian non-profit rejected the image of EA as monolithic. "It is a values-based movement and not an identity-based movement," he said.

"We're all trying to do the most good, with the resources we have," he said. Those values "can be interpreted differently, and I think we have to embrace those differences."

- No leader -

EA has no leader or spokesperson. Sjir Hoeijmakers, head of the charity platform Giving What We Can, said that is a good thing, even if it means "sometimes the story doesn't get told."

Still, "effective altruism is now a movement large enough that it's actually really influencing the world, and that's getting noticed," he said.

"I think the work that they're doing has been quite valuable," said Nadav Brandes, a genetics researcher also at EA Global, referring to AI safety.

"Without those pioneers... nobody would still today take this issue very seriously," he added.

Brandes said he was initially skeptical when AI became a major EA cause, joining climate change and animal welfare.

"It was even a little bit off-putting to me," he recalled. "I was totally wrong about it."

Robinson stressed, however, that EA is about more than AI.

"The cause that gets the most emphasis right now is AI safety, but I think it would be false to say EA is AI safety," he said.

"If you look at the money side of things, actually, it's been the case for many years that global health and development gets much more money than AI," he said.

Technology

Tech Firms Claw Back Some Losses after Midterms Rout, Eyes on Nvidia

Nvidia said it was launching an investigation into whether boss Jensen Huang had been targeted in a foreign espionage plot. Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP/File
Nvidia said it was launching an investigation into whether boss Jensen Huang had been targeted in a foreign espionage plot. Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP/File
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Tech Firms Claw Back Some Losses after Midterms Rout, Eyes on Nvidia

Nvidia said it was launching an investigation into whether boss Jensen Huang had been targeted in a foreign espionage plot. Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP/File
Nvidia said it was launching an investigation into whether boss Jensen Huang had been targeted in a foreign espionage plot. Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP/File

Tech firms rose Monday to claw back some of last week's painful losses fueled by AI regulation worries, though traders were keeping a wary eye on a probe into Nvidia boss Jensen Huang amid claims of an affair with a Chinese spy.

Chipmakers and other companies linked to the artificial intelligence boom took a hammering in the days after Tuesday's US midterms saw Democrats sweep both houses of Congress in a rebuke to Donald Trump and his Republican party.

The results suggested voters were angry at the president's Iran war and tariffs, which have sent prices soaring, as well as a sharp kickback against the huge data center buildout that has taken place across the country in recent years.

That has led to speculation the new Congress will seek to wind in tech firms' construction drive, which could put thousands of jobs at risk.

The uncertainty comes with traders already nervous about when the hundreds of billions of dollars pumped into the sector would actually see a profit.

After taking a lashing on Thursday, Wall Street enjoyed a little stability at the end of last week, and Asia -- which had suffered a hammering itself on Friday -- largely followed suit to start this week.

Tokyo, Seoul and Taipei -- which are heavily weighted with AI-linked tech giants -- led the advances.

The Japanese Nikkei 225 piled on more than three percent thanks to rallies in Kioxia, Tokyo Electron and Advantest, while SK hynix and Samsung piled on around three percent to push the South Korean Kospi sharply higher.

Taiwan's TSMC rocketed nearly six percent to drag the Taiex five percent higher.

There were also healthy gains in Hong Kong and Shanghai, though Sydney, Wellington and Manila edged down.

"Investors will be watching carefully this week to get a sense as to whether these gains are just short-covering, bargain hunting or the beginning of something more sustainable in nature," said Sally Auld at National Australia Bank.

"Fears around AI regulation, the outlook for (capital expenditure) and free cash flow have been the driver of risk reduction in recent weeks and these issues are not likely to be resolved with any conviction in the near term.

"Nonetheless, the valuation of many tech stocks now looks less expensive."

- Nvidia probe -

However, a little more uncertainty was injected into markets with news that Nvidia's board was launching an investigation into whether Huang had been targeted in a foreign espionage plot following his admission that he was unfaithful to his wife.

The New York Times reported last month that US intelligence officials concluded a Chinese executive linked to a Singapore-based data center company called Megaspeed had been funneling information to Beijing.

The executive, Alice Huang -- also known as Huang Le, and no relation to 63-year-old Taiwanese-born Jensen -- developed a close relationship with the Nvidia boss, the Times said.

Nvidia is a global leader in producing chips used to train and run AI models and one of the world's most valuable companies, and last year became the first to reach a market capitalization of $5 trillion.

Jensen Huang is a huge figure in the AI revolution and a close informal adviser to Trump, and the Times said the Nvidia boss's extra-marital relationship could have revealed insights into Trump's thinking around AI.

Technology analyst Dan Ives, at investment bank Yorkville Ives, said the crisis will at the very least spark multiple congressional inquiries and "create an overhang on the stock for a myriad of reasons".

"This will add risk to the stock as he is so important to the Nvidia story and strategy globally," Ives added. "This will also increase major scrutiny regarding selling chips to China, which remains a key battleground issue in DC."

Investors will be keeping tabs this week on the release of fresh US inflation data, after figures Friday showed the economy created far more jobs than expected in October.

The figures will key for the Federal Reserve in determining whether or not to hike interest rates when it meets next in December, with markets saying there is an 80 percent chance of a lift.

Technology

Pakistan-Built Robots Serve Taste of Future to Karachi Diners

This photograph taken on October 2, 2026 shows Robia (R) and Jojo (2R), humanoid robot waitresses serving customers at the Sicilian restaurant in Karachi. (AFP)
This photograph taken on October 2, 2026 shows Robia (R) and Jojo (2R), humanoid robot waitresses serving customers at the Sicilian restaurant in Karachi. (AFP)
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Pakistan-Built Robots Serve Taste of Future to Karachi Diners

This photograph taken on October 2, 2026 shows Robia (R) and Jojo (2R), humanoid robot waitresses serving customers at the Sicilian restaurant in Karachi. (AFP)
This photograph taken on October 2, 2026 shows Robia (R) and Jojo (2R), humanoid robot waitresses serving customers at the Sicilian restaurant in Karachi. (AFP)

Wheeling its way between dining booths at a neon-lit restaurant in Pakistan's Karachi megacity, a robot waitress drops off a fresh pizza to an awaiting family.

While global buzz is growing around agile humanoids made in the United States, China and elsewhere, robotic staff are a rare sight in the South Asian country.

"Welcome to Sicilian. My name is Robia," the waitress says in an electronic voice, looking down at diners through blinking red LED eyes.

Robia and her colleague Jojo are the DIY creations of Pakistani engineer Syed Osama Aziz, who is bringing a sci-fi reboot to Karachi's storied dining scene.

They have spherical white heads and dark visors, similar to a motorcycle helmet, and sport black shawls around their neck in the style of a dupatta worn by women in the region.

Aziz, who also established The Sicilian restaurant, developed the machines using mostly locally manufactured parts, designing their circuit boards and programming them in his own lab.

"The equipment, the things needed to make robots, are not so easily available here, so we had to arrange them," he told AFP.

The duo were developed through his robotics company, Cobot, with help from friends and some electronic components imported from abroad.

In China and other East Asian countries especially, robots are an increasingly common sight, shuttling food to customers in chain restaurants and taking on other jobs from cleaning to greeting hotel guests.

But they remain a novelty in Pakistan, where Aziz's home-grown creations are attracting curious diners.

When they arrive at a table, the customers must either take the food off their serving tray themselves or wait for a human member of staff to assist them.

- Excited customers -

Aziz, whose workshop manufacturing the robots is located in Multan in Pakistan's central Punjab province, hopes to make his creations more sophisticated in the future.

"Our plans are to add camera-based processing and image-processing features," he said.

"That means the robot will also recognize you by looking at you, and it will remember what you ordered last time, and accordingly it will be able to give you better suggestions."

For now, the robots are proving a hit with families, who flock to the restaurant to watch the machines in action.

"The best thing about it is that it introduces itself," excited customer Ahmer Zameer told AFP, explaining the robot also "tells you what things you can order".

Children reach out to touch the robots while their parents snap photographs and selfies.

Young customer Sonia Dilosker said she was impressed by the androids' appearance and preferred their approach to serving customers, "because it is a machine and without any emotions".

Restaurant staff say the novelty has brought a surge in customers -- some travelling from across the sprawling port city to meet the robots.

"Our business has grown. People are coming from far away for this. They have seen a robot for the first time here," staff member Hellen told AFP.

"People are excited to see this."