
Saudi Arabia to host Global IoT Congress 2025
Global investments in IoT are forecast to exceed SR4.5 trillion by 2026, and in the Middle East and North Africa, the IoT market is projected to reach SR90 billion by the same year.
Saudi Arabia's IoT market specifically is estimated to grow 12-18 percent year-on-year to reach a market size of SR25.8 billion.
As the region's largest IoT market, Riyadh is set to host the Global Internet of Things Congress 2025 on Oct. 21. The three-day event — the largest dedicated IoT event in the Kingdom and the wider MENA region — will put the Saudi capital in the spotlight as a regional powerhouse of emerging IoT technologies.
More than 200 prominent exhibitors and speakers ranging from industries like IoT, artificial intelligence, smart cities, energy, healthcare, and other emerging technologies, are expected from all over the world to address over 5,000 high-profile attendees such as industry leaders, C-level businesspeople and governmental stakeholders.
The Congress, organized by the Internet of Things Association, is set to host public entities, academic institutions, private companies, investors, entrepreneurs, and media representatives from all over the world. This landmark event will feature keynote sessions, interactive workshops, a technology exhibition, and strategic partnership announcements.
Abdullah bin Salem Al-Bedaiwy, chairman of the board at the IoTA, said: 'As a nonprofit organization, the association is committed to development and innovation, encouraging investment, enhancing local content, and increasing localization within the IoT sector. Our initiative aims to launch a global IoT platform in its largest market, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. We extend our sincere gratitude to all our partners who contributed to making this vision a reality, and we look forward to the support of both the public and private sectors to ensure the success of this global event on Saudi soil.'
He added: 'As a nonprofit organization, the IoTA is committed to fostering innovation and advancing both human and technological capital in the IoT sector. Our vision is to host the region's largest dedicated IoT event in its biggest market, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. We extend our sincere gratitude to all our partners who have contributed to making this possible, and we look forward to the support of both the public and the private sector, to ensure the success of this global gathering in Saudi Arabia.'
Global Internet of Things Congress 2025 will cultivate cross-border and cross-sector knowledge exchange, drive innovation, and unlock investment opportunities, aligned with the objectives of digital transformation in Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Arab News
2 hours ago
- Arab News
Developing countries must get help to access global markets, says Saudi minister
RIYADH: Saudi Arabia's deputy foreign minister, Waleed Elkhereiji emphasized the Kingdom's support for the global economy during a speech on Wednesday in Awaza, Turkmenistan, at the Third UN Conference on Landlocked Developing Countries. He stressed the important need to provide assistance for such countries so that they can more easily access global markets, and as a result enhance their security, stability and sustainable development, the Saudi Press Agency reported. Elkhereiji also highlighted the importance of international collaborations and strategic partnerships in efforts to achieve global economic stability and sustainable development, particularly in landlocked developing countries, and reaffirmed the Kingdom's commitment to finding lasting solutions to global economic challenges and obstacles to trade and development. Saudi Arabia aims to help implement global plans for sustainable development through smart investments and projects in line with the goals of the nation's own Saudi Vision 2030 plan for national development and diversification, he added, while also supporting cooperation between countries through its membership of international organizations. Also on Wednesday, Elkhereiji held talks with Rashid Meredov, Turkmenistan's deputy prime minister and minister of foreign affairs, about cooperation, and regional and international developments.


Saudi Gazette
2 hours ago
- Saudi Gazette
HUMAIN deploys OpenAI's latest open-source models on Groq platform inside Saudi Arabia
Saudi Gazette report RIYADH — Saudi Arabia's HUMAIN has fully deployed OpenAI's new open-source models — gpt-oss-120B and gpt-oss-20B — on Groq's ultra-high-speed inference platform. The models are hosted within HUMAIN's sovereign AI data centers inside the Kingdom, ensuring full compliance with local regulatory and data sovereignty frameworks. The deployment delivers OpenAI's most advanced open-source capabilities to Saudi developers, enterprises, and public institutions, offering high-speed, low-latency inference while maintaining alignment with the Kingdom's legal and privacy standards. The gpt-oss-120B and gpt-oss-20B models offer unprecedented scale, 128K context windows, and built-in tools for real-time code execution and semantic search. Running at over 500 and 1,000 tokens per second respectively on Groq's infrastructure, they enable advanced reasoning and dialogue at previously unmatched speeds. 'This is a defining moment for Saudi Arabia,' said Tareq Amin, CEO of HUMAIN. 'By hosting the world's most powerful open models locally, we are enabling Saudi innovators to access frontier AI with full sovereignty. This is what AI leadership looks like.' Jonathan Ross, CEO of Groq, added: 'Groq was built to run models like this fast, affordably, and at scale. Our partnership with HUMAIN puts us at the center of one of the most ambitious AI ecosystems globally.' The announcement marks a new phase in the strategic collaboration between HUMAIN and Groq, first revealed in May 2025. It positions Saudi Arabia as a vital global corridor for AI innovation, linking compute, compliance, and capability across the GCC, the Levant, Africa, Asia, and beyond. By ensuring that all data and inference operations occur within national borders, the deployment empowers local institutions to adopt world-class AI without compromising on privacy, compliance, or latency.


Arab News
4 hours ago
- Arab News
Ignore the tech titans — AI is not your friend
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and OpenAI's Sam Altman have been aggressively promoting the idea that everyone, children included, should form relationships with AI 'friends' or 'companions.' Meanwhile, multinational tech companies are pushing the concept of 'AI agents' designed to assist us in our personal and professional lives, handle routine tasks, and guide decision-making. But the reality is that AI systems are not, and never will be, friends, companions, or agents. They are, and will remain, machines. We should be honest about that and push back against misleading marketing that suggests otherwise. The most deceptive term of all is 'artificial intelligence.' These systems are not truly intelligent, and what we call 'AI' today is simply a set of technical tools designed to mimic certain cognitive functions. They are incapable of true comprehension and are not objective, fair, or neutral. Nor are they becoming any smarter. AI systems rely on data to function, and increasingly that includes data generated by tools such as ChatGPT. The result is a feedback loop that recycles output without producing deeper understanding. More fundamentally, intelligence is not just about solving tasks; it is also about how those tasks are approached and performed. Despite their technical capabilities, AI models remain limited to specific domains, such as processing large datasets, performing logical deductions, and making calculations. When it comes to social intelligence, however, machines can only simulate emotions, interactions, and relationships. A medical robot, for example, could be programmed to cry when a patient cries, yet no one would argue that it feels genuine sadness. The same robot could just as easily be programmed to slap the patient, and it would carry out that command with equal precision — and with the same lack of authenticity and self-awareness. The machine does not 'care'; it simply follows instructions. And no matter how advanced such systems become, that is not going to change. Simply put, machines lack moral agency. Their behavior is governed by patterns and rules created by people, whereas human morality is rooted in autonomy — the capacity to recognize ethical norms and behave accordingly. By contrast, AI systems are designed for functionality and optimization. They may adapt through self-learning, but the rules they generate have no inherent ethical meaning. Consider self-driving cars. To get from point A to point B as quickly as possible, a self-driving vehicle might develop rules to optimize travel time. If running over pedestrians would help achieve that goal, the car might do so, unless instructed not to, because it cannot understand the moral implications of harming people. This is partly because machines are incapable of grasping the principle of generalizability — the idea that an action is ethical only if it can be justified as a universal rule. Moral judgment depends on the ability to provide a plausible rationale that others can reasonably accept. These are what we often refer to as 'good reasons.' Unlike machines, humans are able to engage in generalizable moral reasoning and, therefore, can judge whether their actions are right or wrong. Simply put, machines lack moral agency. Their behavior is governed by patterns and rules created by people, whereas human morality is rooted in autonomy — the capacity to recognize ethical norms and behave accordingly. Peter G. Kirchschlager The term 'data-based systems' is thus more appropriate than 'artificial intelligence,' as it reflects what AI can actually do: generate, collect, process, and evaluate data to make observations and predictions. It also clarifies the strengths and limitations of today's emerging technologies. At their core, these are systems that use highly sophisticated mathematical processes to analyze vast amounts of data — nothing more. Humans may interact with them, but communication is entirely one-way. Data-based systems have no awareness of what they are 'doing' or of anything happening around them. This is not to suggest that DS cannot benefit humanity or the planet. On the contrary, we can and should rely on them in domains where their capabilities exceed our own. But we must also actively manage and mitigate the ethical risks they present. Developing human-rights-based DS and establishing an international data-based systems agency at the UN would be important first steps in that direction. Over the past two decades, Big Tech firms have isolated us and fractured our societies through social media — more accurately described as 'antisocial media,' given its addictive and corrosive nature. Now, those same companies are promoting a radical new vision: replacing human connection with AI 'friends' and 'companions.' At the same time, these companies continue to ignore the so-called 'black box problem': the untraceability, unpredictability, and lack of transparency in the algorithmic processes behind automated evaluations, predictions, and decisions. This opacity, combined with the high likelihood of biased and discriminatory algorithms, inevitably results in biased and discriminatory outcomes. The risks posed by DS are not theoretical. These systems already shape our private and professional lives in increasingly harmful ways, manipulating us economically and politically, yet tech CEOs urge us to let DS tools guide our decisions. To protect our freedom and dignity, as well as the freedom and dignity of future generations, we must not allow machines to masquerade as what they are not: us. • Peter G. Kirchschlager, Professor of Ethics and Director of the Institute of Social Ethics ISE at the University of Lucerne, is a visiting professor at ETH Zurich. ©Project Syndicate