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Saudi Arabia, Lenovo Sign Agreement to Train and Employ 100 National Talents in Advanced Industrial Technologies

The ‏agreement was signed during the 21st General Conference of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) in Riyadh. SPA
The ‏agreement was signed during the 21st General Conference of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) in Riyadh. SPA
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Saudi Arabia, Lenovo Sign Agreement to Train and Employ 100 National Talents in Advanced Industrial Technologies

The ‏agreement was signed during the 21st General Conference of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) in Riyadh. SPA
The ‏agreement was signed during the 21st General Conference of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) in Riyadh. SPA

The Human Resources Development Fund (HRDF) signed a major workforce development agreement with Lenovo Saudi Arabia to train and employ 100 Saudi men and women across high-value technical and engineering roles.

‏The signing took place during the 21st General Conference of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), currently being hosted in Riyadh. Held under the patronage of the Minister of Industry and Mineral Resources, Bandar AlKhorayef, the agreement is a key pillar of the Kingdom’s national agenda to develop world-class industrial capabilities and strengthen human capital in priority sectors.

‏Under the agreement, Lenovo will launch its first specialized industrial training program in Saudi Arabia, designed to equip national talent with globally competitive skills for careers in advanced manufacturing and high-tech industrial operations.

‏The initiative will include training inside and outside the Kingdom, supported by HRDF. This agreement also aligns with Lenovo's strategic partnership with Alat. It reinforces the human capabilities initiative in advanced manufacturing, which was announced at the Future Investment Initiative (FII9) in Riyadh last month.

‏The program is designed to equip 100 Saudi nationals with specialized expertise for critical roles within the advanced manufacturing sector. Participants will be prepared for careers spanning multiple disciplines, including various engineering fields, materials management and planning, and production and industrial engineering.

‏The curriculum will also develop talent in quality management and strategic operations, ensuring a comprehensive pipeline of skilled professionals ready to support the Kingdom's industrial ambitions. All selected candidates will join Lenovo as full-time employees and simultaneously enter the ISTDAM Advanced Talent Development Program, a four-month intensive training track designed to build core competencies for high-tech industrial roles.

‏This partnership reinforces Saudi Arabia's commitment to cultivating a world-class national workforce capable of driving the Kingdom's expanding industrial and technological sectors. This high-profile signing at the UNIDO General Conference positions Saudi Arabia as a global sustainability leader and spotlights its strategic investment in human capital development.

‏Other global manufacturers, such as Lenovo, now have a clear pathway into Saudi Arabia's advanced industrial ecosystem, which combines modern infrastructure, strategic investment, and a skilled national workforce. This collaboration creates a repeatable model for future alliances. It opens the way for Saudi Arabia to become the hub of global innovation, attracting leading technologies in artificial intelligence, automation, and sustainable manufacturing.

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Technology

China's DeepSeek launches V4.1-Flash model

A DeepSeek AI sign is seen at a building where the Chinese start-up's office is located in Beijing, China, February 19, 2025. REUTERS/Florence Lo
A DeepSeek AI sign is seen at a building where the Chinese start-up's office is located in Beijing, China, February 19, 2025. REUTERS/Florence Lo
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China's DeepSeek launches V4.1-Flash model

A DeepSeek AI sign is seen at a building where the Chinese start-up's office is located in Beijing, China, February 19, 2025. REUTERS/Florence Lo
A DeepSeek AI sign is seen at a building where the Chinese start-up's office is located in Beijing, China, February 19, 2025. REUTERS/Florence Lo

Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek on Thursday launched DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash, which the company said is the smallest model in its new architecture ⁠family, according to ⁠a statement.

The release came as the company ⁠is starting to prepare for an initial public offering on Shanghai's tech-focused STAR Market, Reuters has reported.

DeepSeek said the new model ⁠is designed ⁠for greater capability, faster inference, higher throughput and scaling to larger models.

Technology

China Says US Accusations of AI Theft Are ‘Groundless’

A DeepSeek AI sign is seen at a building where the Chinese start-up's office is located in Beijing, China, February 19, 2025. (Reuters)
A DeepSeek AI sign is seen at a building where the Chinese start-up's office is located in Beijing, China, February 19, 2025. (Reuters)
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China Says US Accusations of AI Theft Are ‘Groundless’

A DeepSeek AI sign is seen at a building where the Chinese start-up's office is located in Beijing, China, February 19, 2025. (Reuters)
A DeepSeek AI sign is seen at a building where the Chinese start-up's office is located in Beijing, China, February 19, 2025. (Reuters)

China said on Wednesday that US accusations of Chinese labs stealing the capabilities of American models were "groundless", as the two countries race for tech supremacy. 

The US cyber defense agency released an advisory on Tuesday accusing top Chinese AI labs including DeepSeek and Moonshot AI of systematically stealing the capabilities "through industrial-scale knowledge distillation campaigns". 

It came ahead of an expected meeting this month between President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping at the White House, where AI could be an important discussion topic. 

China hit back on Wednesday, calling the accusations "groundless". 

"The US approach is a typical case of using the crackdown on distillation as a pretext to achieve industrial monopoly," the Ministry of Commerce said in a statement. 

The US accusations are a "case of double standards", it added. 

Distillation is where an AI model is trained to mimic the output of a larger, more capable one. 

The method is widely used across the industry, but Washington says Chinese firms have deployed it at scale to illicitly copy American systems. 

The US advisory also detailed how DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, Alibaba, MiniMax, StepFun and Z.AI allegedly used millions of exchanges and requests to steal the capabilities of US models from the likes of OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and xAI. 

Chinese companies that adopt this strategy "see significantly shorter AI development timelines and reduced financial expenditures in training a frontier model", the advisory said. 

These actions, taken "likely with Chinese government awareness", have occurred since at least late 2024, it said. 

AFP contacted the Chinese companies apart from StepFun, which was not immediately reachable. Moonshot AI declined to comment. 

Trump is under pressure to respond to the increasing success of Chinese AI models that many companies prefer to the more powerful, but pricier, US versions from Anthropic or OpenAI. 

In July, dozens of startups wrote a letter to the Trump administration urging it to think twice against any outright ban or strict curbs on foreign-made AI models, saying this should only be considered for government use of the technology. 

That month, Beijing also turned the tables by accusing US AI of using Chinese examples to train their models. 

Asked about the accusations at a regular briefing on Wednesday, Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said the United States should "refrain from making unfounded accusations against and smearing China". 

"The development of artificial intelligence in China is the result of achieving high-level self-reliance and strength in science and technology," she said. 

"Both China and the United States are major countries in the field of AI. We should strengthen cooperation." 

Technology

OpenAI Says Working with Samsung on Next-Generation Chips, Deepening Cooperation

The logo of Samsung is seen on a building during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain February 25, 2018. (Reuters)
The logo of Samsung is seen on a building during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain February 25, 2018. (Reuters)
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OpenAI Says Working with Samsung on Next-Generation Chips, Deepening Cooperation

The logo of Samsung is seen on a building during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain February 25, 2018. (Reuters)
The logo of Samsung is seen on a building during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain February 25, 2018. (Reuters)

OpenAI is deepening cooperation with Samsung Electronics as the ChatGPT maker develops its own chips, expanding ties with the South Korean technology giant across semiconductors and enterprise AI services.

"One of the areas where we have made the most progress and gained the most recognition with Samsung Electronics is our joint production and research on the next-generation chips we are developing," Harrison Kim, General Manager of OpenAI Korea, said at a press ‌conference in Seoul ‌on Wednesday, without elaborating.

Kim also said Samsung Electronics was "one ‌of ⁠the largest-scale deployments of ⁠ChatGPT globally," saying the company's employees in Korea and overseas use ChatGPT for work across research and development, marketing and sales.

Samsung Electronics said in a statement that it could not confirm information related to customers.

In June, OpenAI unveiled its first custom artificial intelligence chip designed with Broadcom. OpenAI's engineers designed the chip, called Jalapeno, together with Broadcom for a task known as AI inference, the ⁠process of crunching data to answer queries in applications ‌such as ChatGPT.

OpenAI at that time said that ‌Taiwan's TSMC would manufacture the chips.

Last year, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix signed letters ‌of intent to supply memory chips for OpenAI's Stargate data center project.

Kim ‌said demand for memory chips would continue to grow as more advanced chips were needed to enable faster and more complex computing, making cooperation with South Korean semiconductor suppliers a priority for OpenAI's local office.

The cooperation comes as Samsung broadens its ‌use of generative AI. The company said in June that workers in its Device eXperience division, which oversees mobile ⁠phones, televisions and home ⁠appliances, would be allowed to use ChatGPT, Google's Gemini and Anthropic's Claude internally.

OpenAI said the number of ChatGPT Enterprise users at South Korean companies and institutions had surged about 28-fold as of the end of August from a year earlier, as businesses broadened their use of artificial intelligence from individual tasks to company-wide operations.

Companies were increasingly using AI across functions including legal, sales, finance, marketing and operations, OpenAI said. The company declined to provide absolute user numbers.

South Korea had the largest number of paying ChatGPT subscribers outside the United States as of late last year, according to OpenAI.

OpenAI expects adoption to accelerate following the September 4 launch of GPT-6 Astra, its latest model, which it said offered improved performance in computer use, professional work, science, coding and cybersecurity.