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Channel Post MEA
15-05-2025
- Business
- Channel Post MEA
Saudi Arabia's Humain Partners With AWS For $5bn 'AI Zone'
Amazon Web Services (AWS) and HUMAIN, Saudi Arabia's newly created company responsible for driving AI innovation, have announced plans to invest $5 billion-plus in a strategic partnership to build a groundbreaking 'AI Zone' in the Kingdom. This first-of-a-kind AI Zone will bring together multiple innovative capabilities, including dedicated AWS AI infrastructure and servers with world-class semiconductors, UltraCluster networks for faster AI training and inference, AWS services like SageMaker and Bedrock, and AI application services such as Amazon Q to advance Saudi Arabia's mission to be a world leader in AI. AWS previously announced and is currently building an AWS infrastructure region in Saudi Arabia that will become available in 2026. Amazon is investing US$5.3 billion (approx. 19.88 billion Saudi riyal) in Saudi Arabia to develop this new region for AWS. The new AI Zone announced today is an additional investment to grow global and local demand for advanced AI services in the Kingdom, and is part of AWS's long-term commitment to bring its world-class infrastructure and services to Saudi Arabia. This collaboration aligns with Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 and builds upon the Kingdom's pledge in 2024 to invest in building an AI-powered economy, representing a significant step towards realizing Saudi Arabia's ambitions to become a global AI leader. AWS will bring to Saudi Arabia its advanced server and network infrastructure capabilities, as well as its artificial intelligence and machine learning services—including Amazon SageMaker AI, Amazon Bedrock and Amazon Q, fully managed services for building and scaling generative AI (genAI) applications. With Amazon Bedrock in Saudi Arabia, businesses and government organizations can access high-performing models from leading AI companies to develop genAI applications with security, privacy, and responsible AI. Amazon Q is the world's most capable coding assistant, and also enables organizations to build genAI-powered assistants to answer questions, provide summaries, generate content, and complete tasks based on enterprise data. Through this collaboration, HUMAIN plans to develop AI solutions using AWS technologies for its end customers. Further, HUMAIN will work with AWS on the development of a unified AI agent marketplace, simplifying the discovery, deployment, and management of AI software for the Saudi Arabia government. The collaboration also intends to spur the growth of Large Language Models (LLMs), including Arabic Large Language Models (ALLaM), while spearheading wide adoption of AI in organizations and industries across the Gulf Region and beyond. Key sectors, such as government, energy, healthcare, and education, will be able to accelerate their transformation, envisioning AI-powered tools that can personalize learning experiences for students, help provide early disease diagnoses for patients, and unleash productivity across core upstream and downstream processes for government administration. Use cases such as these will be accelerated via the AWS Generative AI Innovation Center, in partnership with HUMAIN, enabling customers—from the fastest-growing startups and largest enterprises, to government agencies—to amplify genAI roadmaps and workloads, leading to equitable and efficient delivery of vital services for greater societal impact. 'We thank AWS for doubling down on their long-term partnership with the Kingdom. This new collaboration with HUMAIN lays the foundation for the intelligent era, accelerates our innovation momentum, grows our talent, and reinforces Saudi Arabia's position as a global partner of choice in the age of AI,' said His Excellency Eng. Abdullah Alswaha, Minister of Communications and Information Technology. Fueling Saudi Arabia's vibrant startup sector with AI-powered innovation AWS and HUMAIN will also work together to advance an AI-powered startup sector in the Kingdom, providing access to the broadest and deepest set of cloud technology tools and programs, including AWS Activate, and helping Saudi Arabia's most ambitious founders and entrepreneurs scale their businesses. AWS has helped more than 330,000 startups globally bring their business ideas to life. Its scalable, secure, low-cost cloud solutions and AI-powered services, combined with HUMAIN's deep support network, will help supercharge Saudi's startup scene. According to MAGNiTT, Saudi Arabia startups secured US$750 million venture capital funding in 2024, the highest share of capital deployed across the Middle East and North Africa last year. 'This collaboration to build an AI Zone in Saudi Arabia will enable innovations across all industries using AWS's advanced AI offerings, and reflects our commitment to support Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030,' said Matt Garman, CEO, Amazon Web Services. 'Together, we will empower customers with cost-effective and secure cloud technologies, fuel innovation and economic growth across the nation, and enable HUMAIN to appeal to customers globally.' Accelerating talent development for a vibrant Saudi tech industry As part of its long-term commitment to fast-track cloud adoption in Saudi Arabia, AWS is scaling its training and certification programs focused on genAI skills-building in line with the Kingdom's Vision 2030 digital transformation goals. Working with Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF), AWS has committed to train 100,000 citizens from the Kingdom in cloud computing and genAI, focusing on the two newest AWS genAI certifications: AWS AI Practitioner and AWS Machine Learning Engineer Associate Certifications. Training will be delivered by the Amazon Academy. Launched in 2023, the Amazon Academy is the largest talent development program of its kind in the Middle East. It provides transformative training and certifications, free of cost to participants, to elevate in-demand competencies and equip Saudi talent for jobs of the future. The program is designed to empower the next generation of Saudi youth, entrepreneurs, and professionals at any stage of their career to achieve success across in-demand skills, such as cloud computing, logistics, and leadership. In addition, to help accelerate Saudi Arabia's goal of empowering women to increase participation in the workforce, AWS in 2024 also launched an upskilling program, 'AWS Saudi Arabia Women's Skills Initiative,' in partnership with Skillsoft Global Knowledge. AWS has committed to train 10,000 women on AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials, at no charge, through classroom trainings with AWS-certified professionals. Supercharging HUMAIN's AI ambitions Saudi Arabia is forecast to hold the lion's share of AI's estimated economic impact across the Middle East in the coming years. According to PwC, AI will contribute $130 billion to Saudi's economy by 2030, comprising more than 40 percent of the estimated $320 billion of AI value for the entire Middle East. The Kingdom is also at the forefront of a regional drive to transform both public sector services and enterprises with AI-powered innovation built in the cloud. PwC estimates that nearly 70 percent of Middle East companies plan to migrate most of their operations to the cloud within the next year, while a 2023 report by Telecom Advisory Services predicts public cloud adoption to unlock US$733 billion in economic value by 2033 across the Middle East and North Africa. 'HUMAIN's partnership with AWS is a pivotal moment in Saudi Arabia's journey to become a global leader in AI,' said Tareq Amin, CEO of HUMAIN. 'By leveraging AWS's world-class cloud infrastructure and AI expertise and HUMAIN's full-stack AI capabilities, we are creating an offering that will attract global investment and talent, thereby driving our digital transformation agenda forward.' 0 0
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
AWS and HUMAIN Announce Groundbreaking AI Zone to Accelerate AI Adoption in Saudi Arabia and Globally
More than $5 billion joint investment in AI infrastructure, AWS services, and AI training and talent development will advance Saudi Arabia's mission to be a global leader in AI RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, May 13, 2025--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Inc. company (NASDAQ: AMZN), and HUMAIN, Saudi Arabia's newly created company responsible for driving AI innovation across the Kingdom and globally, today announced plans to invest $5 billion-plus in a strategic partnership to build a groundbreaking "AI Zone" in the Kingdom. This first-of-a-kind AI Zone will bring together multiple innovative capabilities, including dedicated AWS AI infrastructure and servers with world-class semiconductors, UltraCluster networks for faster AI training and inference, AWS services like SageMaker and Bedrock, and AI application services such as Amazon Q to advance Saudi Arabia's mission to be a world leader in AI. AWS previously announced and is currently building an AWS infrastructure region in Saudi Arabia that will become available in 2026. Amazon is investing US$5.3 billion (approx. 19.88 billion Saudi riyal) in Saudi Arabia to develop this new region for AWS. The new AI Zone announced today is an additional investment to grow global and local demand for advanced AI services in the Kingdom, and is part of AWS's long-term commitment to bring its world-class infrastructure and services to Saudi Arabia. This collaboration aligns with Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 and builds upon the Kingdom's pledge in 2024 to invest in building an AI-powered economy, representing a significant step towards realizing Saudi Arabia's ambitions to become a global AI leader. AWS will bring to Saudi Arabia its advanced server and network infrastructure capabilities, as well as its artificial intelligence and machine learning services – including Amazon SageMaker AI, Amazon Bedrock and Amazon Q, fully managed services for building and scaling generative AI (genAI) applications. With Amazon Bedrock in Saudi Arabia, businesses and government organizations can access high-performing models from leading AI companies to develop genAI applications with security, privacy, and responsible AI. Amazon Q is the world's most capable coding assistant, and also enables organizations to build genAI-powered assistants to answer questions, provide summaries, generate content, and complete tasks based on enterprise data. Through this collaboration, HUMAIN plans to develop AI solutions using AWS technologies for its end customers. Further, HUMAIN will work with AWS on the development of a unified AI agent marketplace, simplifying the discovery, deployment, and management of AI software for the Saudi Arabia government. The collaboration also intends to spur the growth of Large Language Models (LLMs), including Arabic Large Language Models (ALLaM), while spearheading wide adoption of AI in organizations and industries across the Gulf Region and beyond. Key sectors, such as government, energy, healthcare, and education, will be able to accelerate their transformation, envisioning AI-powered tools that can personalize learning experiences for students, help provide early disease diagnoses for patients, and unleash productivity across core upstream and downstream processes for government administration. Use cases such as these will be accelerated via the AWS Generative AI Innovation Center, in partnership with HUMAIN, enabling customers – from the fastest-growing startups and largest enterprises, to government agencies – to amplify genAI roadmaps and workloads, leading to equitable and efficient delivery of vital services for greater societal impact. "We thank AWS for doubling down on their long-term partnership with the Kingdom. This new collaboration with HUMAIN lays the foundation for the intelligent era, accelerates our innovation momentum, grows our talent, and reinforces Saudi Arabia's position as a global partner of choice in the age of AI," said His Excellency Eng. Abdullah Alswaha, Minister of Communications and Information Technology. Fueling Saudi Arabia's vibrant startup sector with AI-powered innovation AWS and HUMAIN will also work together to advance an AI-powered startup sector in the Kingdom, providing access to the broadest and deepest set of cloud technology tools and programs, including AWS Activate, and helping Saudi Arabia's most ambitious founders and entrepreneurs scale their businesses. AWS has helped more than 330,000 startups globally bring their business ideas to life. Its scalable, secure, low-cost cloud solutions and AI-powered services, combined with HUMAIN's deep support network, will help supercharge Saudi's startup scene. According to MAGNiTT, Saudi Arabia startups secured US$750 million venture capital funding in 2024, the highest share of capital deployed across the Middle East and North Africa last year. "This collaboration to build an AI Zone in Saudi Arabia will enable innovations across all industries using AWS's advanced AI offerings, and reflects our commitment to support Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030," said Matt Garman, CEO, Amazon Web Services. "Together, we will empower customers with cost-effective and secure cloud technologies, fuel innovation and economic growth across the nation, and enable HUMAIN to appeal to customers globally." Accelerating talent development for a vibrant Saudi tech industry As part of its long-term commitment to fast-track cloud adoption in Saudi Arabia, AWS is scaling its training and certification programs focused on genAI skills-building in line with the Kingdom's Vision 2030 digital transformation goals. Working with Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF), AWS has committed to train 100,000 citizens from the Kingdom in cloud computing and genAI, focusing on the two newest AWS genAI certifications: AWS AI Practitioner and AWS Machine Learning Engineer Associate Certifications. Training will be delivered by the Amazon Academy. Launched in 2023, the Amazon Academy is the largest talent development program of its kind in the Middle East. It provides transformative training and certifications, free of cost to participants, to elevate in-demand competencies and equip Saudi talent for jobs of the future. The program is designed to empower the next generation of Saudi youth, entrepreneurs, and professionals at any stage of their career to achieve success across in-demand skills, such as cloud computing, logistics, and leadership. In addition, to help accelerate Saudi Arabia's goal of empowering women to increase participation in the workforce, AWS in 2024 also launched an upskilling program, "AWS Saudi Arabia Women's Skills Initiative," in partnership with Skillsoft Global Knowledge. AWS has committed to train 10,000 women on AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials, at no charge, through classroom trainings with AWS-certified professionals. Supercharging HUMAIN's AI ambitions Saudi Arabia is forecast to hold the lion's share of AI's estimated economic impact across the Middle East in the coming years. According to PwC, AI will contribute $130 billion to Saudi's economy by 2030, comprising more than 40 percent of the estimated $320 billion of AI value for the entire Middle East. The Kingdom is also at the forefront of a regional drive to transform both public sector services and enterprises with AI-powered innovation built in the cloud. PwC estimates that nearly 70 percent of Middle East companies plan to migrate most of their operations to the cloud within the next year, while a 2023 report by Telecom Advisory Services predicts public cloud adoption to unlock US$733 billion in economic value by 2033 across the Middle East and North Africa. "HUMAIN's partnership with AWS is a pivotal moment in Saudi Arabia's journey to become a global leader in AI," said Tareq Amin, CEO of HUMAIN. "By leveraging AWS's world-class cloud infrastructure and AI expertise and HUMAIN's full-stack AI capabilities, we are creating an offering that will attract global investment and talent, thereby driving our digital transformation agenda forward." About Amazon Web Services Since 2006, Amazon Web Services has been the world's most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud. AWS has been continually expanding its services to support virtually any workload, and it now has more than 240 fully featured services for compute, storage, databases, networking, analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), mobile, security, hybrid, media, and application development, deployment, and management from 114 Availability Zones within 36 geographic regions, with announced plans for 16 more Availability Zones and five more AWS Regions in Chile, New Zealand, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, and the AWS European Sovereign Cloud. Millions of customers—including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies—trust AWS to power their infrastructure, become more agile, and lower costs. To learn more about AWS, visit About Amazon Amazon is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. Amazon strives to be Earth's Most Customer-Centric Company, Earth's Best Employer, and Earth's Safest Place to Work. Customer reviews, 1-Click shopping, personalized recommendations, Prime, Fulfillment by Amazon, AWS, Kindle Direct Publishing, Kindle, Career Choice, Fire tablets, Fire TV, Amazon Echo, Alexa, Just Walk Out technology, Amazon Studios, and The Climate Pledge are some of the things pioneered by Amazon. For more information, visit and follow @AmazonNews. About HUMAIN HUMAIN, a PIF company, is a global artificial intelligence company delivering full-stack AI capabilities across four core areas - next-generation data centers, hyper-performance infrastructure & cloud platforms, advanced AI Models, including one of the world's most advanced Arabic multimodal LLMs, and transformative AI Solutions that combine deep sector insight with real-world execution. HUMAIN's end-to-end model serves both public and private sector organisations, unlocking exponential value across all industries, driving transformation and strengthening capabilities through human-AI synergies. With a growing portfolio of sector-specific AI products and a core mission to drive IP leadership and talent supremacy world-wide, HUMAIN is engineered for global competitiveness and national View source version on Contacts HotlineAmazon-pr@ Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Business Wire
13-05-2025
- Business
- Business Wire
AWS and HUMAIN Announce Groundbreaking AI Zone to Accelerate AI Adoption in Saudi Arabia and Globally
BUSINESS WIRE)--Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Inc. company (NASDAQ: AMZN), and HUMAIN, Saudi Arabia's newly created company responsible for driving AI innovation across the Kingdom and globally, today announced plans to invest $5 billion-plus in a strategic partnership to build a groundbreaking 'AI Zone' in the Kingdom. This first-of-a-kind AI Zone will bring together multiple innovative capabilities, including dedicated AWS AI infrastructure and servers with world-class semiconductors, UltraCluster networks for faster AI training and inference, AWS services like SageMaker and Bedrock, and AI application services such as Amazon Q to advance Saudi Arabia's mission to be a world leader in AI. AWS previously announced and is currently building an AWS infrastructure region in Saudi Arabia that will become available in 2026. Amazon is investing US$5.3 billion (approx. 19.88 billion Saudi riyal) in Saudi Arabia to develop this new region for AWS. The new AI Zone announced today is an additional investment to grow global and local demand for advanced AI services in the Kingdom, and is part of AWS's long-term commitment to bring its world-class infrastructure and services to Saudi Arabia. This collaboration aligns with Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 and builds upon the Kingdom's pledge in 2024 to invest in building an AI-powered economy, representing a significant step towards realizing Saudi Arabia's ambitions to become a global AI leader. AWS will bring to Saudi Arabia its advanced server and network infrastructure capabilities, as well as its artificial intelligence and machine learning services – including Amazon SageMaker AI, Amazon Bedrock and Amazon Q, fully managed services for building and scaling generative AI (genAI) applications. With Amazon Bedrock in Saudi Arabia, businesses and government organizations can access high-performing models from leading AI companies to develop genAI applications with security, privacy, and responsible AI. Amazon Q is the world's most capable coding assistant, and also enables organizations to build genAI-powered assistants to answer questions, provide summaries, generate content, and complete tasks based on enterprise data. Through this collaboration, HUMAIN plans to develop AI solutions using AWS technologies for its end customers. Further, HUMAIN will work with AWS on the development of a unified AI agent marketplace, simplifying the discovery, deployment, and management of AI software for the Saudi Arabia government. The collaboration also intends to spur the growth of Large Language Models (LLMs), including Arabic Large Language Models (ALLaM), while spearheading wide adoption of AI in organizations and industries across the Gulf Region and beyond. Key sectors, such as government, energy, healthcare, and education, will be able to accelerate their transformation, envisioning AI-powered tools that can personalize learning experiences for students, help provide early disease diagnoses for patients, and unleash productivity across core upstream and downstream processes for government administration. Use cases such as these will be accelerated via the AWS Generative AI Innovation Center, in partnership with HUMAIN, enabling customers – from the fastest-growing startups and largest enterprises, to government agencies – to amplify genAI roadmaps and workloads, leading to equitable and efficient delivery of vital services for greater societal impact. 'We thank AWS for doubling down on their long-term partnership with the Kingdom. This new collaboration with HUMAIN lays the foundation for the intelligent era, accelerates our innovation momentum, grows our talent, and reinforces Saudi Arabia's position as a global partner of choice in the age of AI,' said His Excellency Eng. Abdullah Alswaha, Minister of Communications and Information Technology. Fueling Saudi Arabia's vibrant startup sector with AI-powered innovation AWS and HUMAIN will also work together to advance an AI-powered startup sector in the Kingdom, providing access to the broadest and deepest set of cloud technology tools and programs, including AWS Activate, and helping Saudi Arabia's most ambitious founders and entrepreneurs scale their businesses. AWS has helped more than 330,000 startups globally bring their business ideas to life. Its scalable, secure, low-cost cloud solutions and AI-powered services, combined with HUMAIN's deep support network, will help supercharge Saudi's startup scene. According to MAGNiTT, Saudi Arabia startups secured US$750 million venture capital funding in 2024, the highest share of capital deployed across the Middle East and North Africa last year. 'This collaboration to build an AI Zone in Saudi Arabia will enable innovations across all industries using AWS's advanced AI offerings, and reflects our commitment to support Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030,' said Matt Garman, CEO, Amazon Web Services. 'Together, we will empower customers with cost-effective and secure cloud technologies, fuel innovation and economic growth across the nation, and enable HUMAIN to appeal to customers globally.' Accelerating talent development for a vibrant Saudi tech industry As part of its long-term commitment to fast-track cloud adoption in Saudi Arabia, AWS is scaling its training and certification programs focused on genAI skills-building in line with the Kingdom's Vision 2030 digital transformation goals. Working with Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF), AWS has committed to train 100,000 citizens from the Kingdom in cloud computing and genAI, focusing on the two newest AWS genAI certifications: AWS AI Practitioner and AWS Machine Learning Engineer Associate Certifications. Training will be delivered by the Amazon Academy. Launched in 2023, the Amazon Academy is the largest talent development program of its kind in the Middle East. It provides transformative training and certifications, free of cost to participants, to elevate in-demand competencies and equip Saudi talent for jobs of the future. The program is designed to empower the next generation of Saudi youth, entrepreneurs, and professionals at any stage of their career to achieve success across in-demand skills, such as cloud computing, logistics, and leadership. In addition, to help accelerate Saudi Arabia's goal of empowering women to increase participation in the workforce, AWS in 2024 also launched an upskilling program, 'AWS Saudi Arabia Women's Skills Initiative,' in partnership with Skillsoft Global Knowledge. AWS has committed to train 10,000 women on AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials, at no charge, through classroom trainings with AWS-certified professionals. Supercharging HUMAIN's AI ambitions Saudi Arabia is forecast to hold the lion's share of AI's estimated economic impact across the Middle East in the coming years. According to PwC, AI will contribute $130 billion to Saudi's economy by 2030, comprising more than 40 percent of the estimated $320 billion of AI value for the entire Middle East. The Kingdom is also at the forefront of a regional drive to transform both public sector services and enterprises with AI-powered innovation built in the cloud. PwC estimates that nearly 70 percent of Middle East companies plan to migrate most of their operations to the cloud within the next year, while a 2023 report by Telecom Advisory Services predicts public cloud adoption to unlock US$733 billion in economic value by 2033 across the Middle East and North Africa. "HUMAIN's partnership with AWS is a pivotal moment in Saudi Arabia's journey to become a global leader in AI,' said Tareq Amin, CEO of HUMAIN. 'By leveraging AWS's world-class cloud infrastructure and AI expertise and HUMAIN's full-stack AI capabilities, we are creating an offering that will attract global investment and talent, thereby driving our digital transformation agenda forward.' About Amazon Web Services Since 2006, Amazon Web Services has been the world's most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud. AWS has been continually expanding its services to support virtually any workload, and it now has more than 240 fully featured services for compute, storage, databases, networking, analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), mobile, security, hybrid, media, and application development, deployment, and management from 114 Availability Zones within 36 geographic regions, with announced plans for 16 more Availability Zones and five more AWS Regions in Chile, New Zealand, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, and the AWS European Sovereign Cloud. Millions of customers—including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies—trust AWS to power their infrastructure, become more agile, and lower costs. To learn more about AWS, visit About Amazon Amazon is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. Amazon strives to be Earth's Most Customer-Centric Company, Earth's Best Employer, and Earth's Safest Place to Work. Customer reviews, 1-Click shopping, personalized recommendations, Prime, Fulfillment by Amazon, AWS, Kindle Direct Publishing, Kindle, Career Choice, Fire tablets, Fire TV, Amazon Echo, Alexa, Just Walk Out technology, Amazon Studios, and The Climate Pledge are some of the things pioneered by Amazon. For more information, visit and follow @AmazonNews. About HUMAIN HUMAIN, a PIF company, is a global artificial intelligence company delivering full-stack AI capabilities across four core areas - next-generation data centers, hyper-performance infrastructure & cloud platforms, advanced AI Models, including one of the world's most advanced Arabic multimodal LLMs, and transformative AI Solutions that combine deep sector insight with real-world execution. HUMAIN's end-to-end model serves both public and private sector organisations, unlocking exponential value across all industries, driving transformation and strengthening capabilities through human-AI synergies. With a growing portfolio of sector-specific AI products and a core mission to drive IP leadership and talent supremacy world-wide, HUMAIN is engineered for global competitiveness and national distinction.
Arabian Business
06-05-2025
- Business
- Arabian Business
AB Majlis podcast: UAE's AI ambitions flourish through AWS partnership, says TII innovation chief
Is the UAE winning the global AI race? A conversation with TII's Dr. Chaouki Kasmi The United Arab Emirates has strengthened its position as a global artificial intelligence powerhouse through strategic partnerships with cloud providers like Amazon Web Services (AWS), according to Dr Chaouki Kasmi, Chief Innovation Officer at the Technology Innovation Institute (TII). Speaking on the latest AB Majlis podcast, Dr Kasmi revealed how AWS played a crucial role in developing Falcon, the UAE's first homegrown large language model (LLM), which now competes with offerings from tech giants like OpenAI and Google. UAE's strategic AI partnerships 'We made the strategic decision to establish our partnership with AWS at the very early days of the Falcon programme,' Dr Kasmi said. 'We also had a lot of interesting support from AWS experts to help us leverage the cloud infrastructure they have in place.' View this post on Instagram A post shared by Arabian Business (@arabianbusiness) The Falcon model is now available on AWS SageMaker, enabling developers to create applications, including chat services similar to ChatGPT. Dr Kasmi also highlighted that the UAE's AI ascendancy reflects the country's early commitment to artificial intelligence, noting it appointed a minister for AI in 2017 and established the first university fully dedicated to the technology. 'The UAE is a very special case in the world,' he said. 'It is a very early adopter and a very early believer that artificial intelligence will be transformational.' The TII executive pointed to a recent report in The Economist that ranked the UAE in the top three countries globally for AI development, behind only the United States and China. Dr Kasmi credited this progress to the country's leadership, which has 'set the innovation agenda' and aligned legal frameworks with infrastructure development and investment in innovation. The collaboration with AWS represents part of a broader ecosystem approach that Dr Kasmi believes is essential for the UAE's continued technological advancement. 'We can really see the benefits of having a strong ecosystem. We have been able to bring Falcon to life because we had strong support from our partners like AWS,' he said. The TII is now focused on bringing Falcon to the application level through AI 71, a startup dedicated to integrating the models into practical products. For businesses in the region, Dr Kasmi stressed that adopting AI-enabled resources is no longer optional but necessary to maintain competitiveness. Government services in the UAE, already heavily digitalised, are well-positioned to integrate AI solutions, with chief AI officers appointed across ministries and government entities. Dr Kasmi also addressed quantum computing, another area where the UAE is investing, with TII developing both quantum sensors and 'the brain of the quantum computer.' He suggested future systems would likely combine quantum and traditional computing infrastructure. 'If we really want to maintain our leadership in science and technology in the region, we have no choice when investing and supporting our quantum research laboratories,' he said. Tune in to AB Majlis every Monday To listen to the full episode and gain a comprehensive understanding of doing business in the Gulf region, visit our RSS feed or check out AB Majlis on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and other platforms. Episodes are also available on: Tune in every Monday for weekly episodes that will help you stay ahead of the curve and enrich your understanding of the Gulf region.
Yahoo
14-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
At $184, I reckon this S&P 500 juggernaut is still on sale
The S&P 500 took a pounding at the beginning of April, falling 11% in the space of a few days. While the benchmark US index has since bounced back by 7.6%, many stocks remain well off their recent highs. Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) is one such example. Its share price is still 23% lower than it was near the start of February. Here, I'll explain why I think the stock may well be on sale for long-term investors. A decade ago, Amazon was already a juggernaut. It posted revenue of $107bn in 2015, with its Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud business nearing $10bn in annual sales. The market cap was above $300bn, which would have made it the largest FTSE 100 firm — and still would by some distance! Investors back then might have mistakenly assumed that the e-commerce giant's high-growth days were coming to an end. However, fast forward to today, Amazon's market cap is just under $2trn! Last year, its revenue came in at $638bn, with AWS growing 19% year on year and contributing over $100bn. Incredibly, Amazon's operating profit surged 86%, reaching $68.6bn. Over the past 10 years, the share price has risen 885%! The lesson here is that just because Amazon is already a juggernaut, it doesn't mean it can't keep growing even larger over the next five to 10 years. Indeed, digesting CEO Andy Jassy's recent annual letter to shareholders, this looks extremely likely to me. The company plans to invest as much as $100bn this year, much of that building out artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities. Services like SageMaker, Bedrock, and Nova already help customers build, deploy, and scale AI applications faster and more affordably. Across the firm, there are more than 1,000 generative AI applications being built. And the new Alexa+ is highly personalised, with contextual memory. It has advanced agentic capabilities, meaning it can better navigate the internet in a self-directed way to complete more tasks on customers' behalf. We continue to believe AI is a once-in-a-lifetime reinvention of everything we know, the demand is unlike anything we've seen before. Amazon is also committed to speeding up e-commerce deliveries. In my experience, this is an area where there is already no competition. As a Prime member, I often order something in the morning and it is dispatched later that same day. Through its Prime Air drone delivery service though, it intends to get items to customers inside an hour. Elsewhere, its satellite network (Project Kuiper) is targeting the 400m-500m households around the world that don't have access to broadband. This service eventually aims to compete directly with SpaceX's Starlink. Now, one risk here is tariffs. Many third-party sellers on Amazon are based in China and many US-based ones source products from Chinese manufacturers. If sellers start dramatically increasing prices, this could impact growth in Amazon's core retail business. Meanwhile, a US recession would exacerbate these risks, while also being problematic for AWS. However, the potential for future growth through AWS and digital advertising looks very strong. Based on 2026 forecasts, the stock is trading at 23.8 times forward earnings. It has rarely been so cheap. I think the rewards far outweigh the risks for long-term investors. The post At $184, I reckon this S&P 500 juggernaut is still on sale appeared first on The Motley Fool UK. More reading 5 Stocks For Trying To Build Wealth After 50 One Top Growth Stock from the Motley Fool John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Ben McPoland has no position in any of the shares mentioned. The Motley Fool UK has recommended Amazon. Views expressed on the companies mentioned in this article are those of the writer and therefore may differ from the official recommendations we make in our subscription services such as Share Advisor, Hidden Winners and Pro. Here at The Motley Fool we believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. Motley Fool UK 2025 Sign in to access your portfolio
