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Microsoft Completes Three Azure Availability Zones in Saudi Arabia to Power Generative AI

Turki Badhris, head of Microsoft Arabia (Asharq Al-Awsat)
Turki Badhris, head of Microsoft Arabia (Asharq Al-Awsat)
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Microsoft Completes Three Azure Availability Zones in Saudi Arabia to Power Generative AI

Turki Badhris, head of Microsoft Arabia (Asharq Al-Awsat)
Turki Badhris, head of Microsoft Arabia (Asharq Al-Awsat)

Microsoft has confirmed the completion of three "availability zones" within its Azure data center region in Saudi Arabia. This development is critical to solidifying the Kingdom's regional leadership in artificial intelligence (AI).

This infrastructure provides "sovereign cloud" capabilities, enabling government entities and the private sector to adopt generative AI technologies locally while fully complying with national regulations.

This move strengthens the Kingdom's position as a secure, compliant, and AI-ready digital hub, aligning directly with Vision 2030 goals. The company's "AI Diffusion 2025 Report" ranked Saudi Arabia among the top three in the Middle East and Africa and among the top 25 countries globally in AI adoption, noting that approximately one-third of users in the Kingdom are now active adopters of AI-enhanced tools, SPA reported.

Regarding national capability development, Microsoft reported that joint training programs have reached more than one million beneficiaries over the past two years. Key initiatives include training over two-thirds of a million participants in the Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority's (SDAIA) "SAMAI" initiative, empowering over 5,000 women through specialized programs, and training thousands of students and over 100,000 teachers through partnerships like the AI Academy and the Microsoft Center of Excellence.

The academy’s training has extended to more than 40 universities, producing finalists in international competitions, with intensive camps enabling participants to obtain professional certifications and secure employment for some before graduation.

Microsoft highlighted several examples of the operational impact of its services: Maaden increased productivity and governance, saving more than 2,000 hours per month using Microsoft 365 Copilot and Azure OpenAI. Obeikan Investment Group connected over 1,200 machines, achieving a 30% increase in productivity on the O3ai platform.

Saudia Airlines developed a smart travel companion using GPT-4 on Azure OpenAI, and ACWA Power enhanced operational safety and water-quality readings using Azure AI capabilities.

Microsoft concluded by stressing that its role as a technology partner to the Kingdom is expanding in preparation for major events like Expo 2030 and the 2034 World Cup, and by supporting giga-projects—including NEOM, Qiddiya, and the Red Sea—and enabling digital transformation in key sectors like energy, finance, and logistics.

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Technology

Pinterest Deepens Amazon Partnership with $4 billion Cloud Deal

FILE PHOTO: Figurines with computers and smartphones are seen in front of Amazon logo 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 Amazon logo in this illustration taken, February 19, 2024. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
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Pinterest Deepens Amazon Partnership with $4 billion Cloud Deal

FILE PHOTO: Figurines with computers and smartphones are seen in front of Amazon logo 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 Amazon logo in this illustration taken, February 19, 2024. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo

Pinterest said on Thursday it would pay Amazon Web Services $4 billion for cloud services through 2031, as the social media company strengthens a long-term partnership with its largest-ever deal.

Shares of Pinterest rose nearly 6%, while those of Amazon were up 1.5%.

Amazon.com's cloud computing unit will provide Pinterest its custom chip processors, including Graviton and Trainium, to help scale its AI initiatives.

"This expanded commitment with AWS gives us the compute flexibility, hardware optionality, and infrastructure efficiency to accelerate our AI vision," Pinterest's Chief Technology Officer Matt Madrigal said in a statement.

Pinterest has been investing in AI tools by rolling out upgrades to its Performance+ ad suite, to boost growth amid intensifying competition from major players such as TikTok and Meta's Instagram and Facebook.

Pinterest said it had worked with AWS since 2010 to improve the reliability and performance of the company's core services.

The company, which last month forecast second-quarter revenue above Wall Street estimates, said it plans to diversify its accelerated compute usage with Amazon's custom silicon to improve price performance for its AI needs.

This includes leveraging AWS Trainium for large language models and vision-language models that power features like personalized visual search and AI-assisted discovery on its platform.

Technology

Meta Enters Enterprise AI Race with New Business Agent

The logo of Meta at the Meta Lab in Los Angeles, California, US, May 20, 2026. (Reuters)
The logo of Meta at the Meta Lab in Los Angeles, California, US, May 20, 2026. (Reuters)
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Meta Enters Enterprise AI Race with New Business Agent

The logo of Meta at the Meta Lab in Los Angeles, California, US, May 20, 2026. (Reuters)
The logo of Meta at the Meta Lab in Los Angeles, California, US, May 20, 2026. (Reuters)

Meta Platforms on Wednesday unveiled an artificial intelligence agent aimed at helping businesses carry out day-to-day operations, positioning the social media giant as a player in the enterprise AI market.

Announced at the company's WhatsApp-focused Conversations conference in London, the new product expands on existing business messaging services by enabling "agentic" capabilities in which the assistant can take actions like booking calendar appointments and closing sales on behalf of businesses.

The company said more than 1 million businesses were already using earlier chatbot versions of such agents on WhatsApp and Messenger. The new version will be added to Instagram as well and rolled out globally to businesses of all sizes.

The move hints at Meta's ambitions to compete with rivals like OpenAI, Anthropic and Alphabet's Google in the market ‌for enterprise applications ‌of its AI tools, leveraging the reach of its WhatsApp, ‌Instagram ⁠and Facebook apps.

"This ⁠is definitely an enterprise play," Naomi Gleit, Meta's head of product, told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of the conference.

The Business Agent can be customized to respond to queries on those apps, channeling a company's tone and handling tasks such as answering frequently asked questions, qualifying leads and escalating complex queries to human staff when needed.

Businesses will initially be able to access the tool for free, with paid subscription options planned in the coming months.

"We actually want to ⁠take actions now. We actually want it to be able to ‌complete the payment, to process the booking, to place ‌the order," going beyond "rule-based automations" for legacy bots, she said.

Alongside the new Business Agent offerings inside ‌Meta's apps, the company is also launching a broader "Business Agent Platform" aimed at giving businesses ‌the infrastructure to build custom AI agents to help them manage their operations elsewhere.

The platform is connected to hundreds of non-Meta systems like Shopify, Zendesk and Shopee, where those agents can be deployed, and provides larger businesses with enterprise-grade controls, guardrails and measurement, the company said.

Gleit is spearheading the company's efforts ‌to expand into new lines of business around AI agents, including with a new team, Enterprise Solutions, announced as part of a ⁠recent companywide restructuring around ⁠AI.

The team will send squads of forward-deployed engineers to embed with enterprise customers, a model used by AI companies such as Anthropic that is aimed at navigating internal politics around AI adoption and writing custom code to help models deliver results.

Its scope is currently focused on new business agents, but it is also working to build and sell agentic AI products that businesses can use for additional internal functions.

Gleit is also working to consolidate the different AI agents Meta has built, including internal workflow-oriented tooling, a user-facing Meta AI support bot and a separate ads-focused "business assistant" launched globally last month, she said.

"The number one thing I hear, especially from small businesses, is 'I just want to go to one place that can do all the things,'" she said.

"You want to make things modular, and you also need to be willing to evolve, because the technology is moving so quickly."

Technology

UK Allows Websites to Opt Out of Google AI Search

FILE PHOTO: The Google logo is pictured at the entrance to the Google offices in London, Britain January 18, 2019. REUTERS/Hannah McKay/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: The Google logo is pictured at the entrance to the Google offices in London, Britain January 18, 2019. REUTERS/Hannah McKay/File Photo
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UK Allows Websites to Opt Out of Google AI Search

FILE PHOTO: The Google logo is pictured at the entrance to the Google offices in London, Britain January 18, 2019. REUTERS/Hannah McKay/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: The Google logo is pictured at the entrance to the Google offices in London, Britain January 18, 2019. REUTERS/Hannah McKay/File Photo

Britain's competition watchdog said Wednesday that it had ordered Google to allow UK website owners to opt out of having their content used by the US technology giant's AI search.

According to AFP, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) called the change a "world first" after it had proposed the measure in January.

Website publishers, particularly media outlets, claim that artificial intelligence models take their content without compensation.

They also argue that the AI-generated summaries discourage clicks to publishers' original pages, reducing traffic to their sites and in turn cutting their advertising revenue.

Google said Wednesday that sites opting out would not receive traffic or impressions from its generative AI features.

In response to the opt-out ruling, Google said that "Today, we're beginning to test a new control that lets website owners manage how their links and content appear in generative AI search features," its Search Ecosystem general manager, Mrinalini Loew, said in a statement.

The CMA said the ruling "will secure a fairer deal for publishers and consumers.”

It added that Google is "required to make sure that publisher content is properly attributed, using clear links, in AI-generated search results.”

The CMA last year designated Google with "strategic market status,” subjecting it to tougher regulation alongside other technology giants.

"With features like (Google's) AI Overviews rapidly reshaping online search, it is crucial that content publishers, including news organizations, have appropriate bargaining power over how their content is used," CMA chief executive Sarah Cardell said in a statement.

AI Overviews currently have more than 2.5 billion monthly users, according to Google, which last month showed off plans to turn its traditional search bar into an AI assistant.