Huawei Cloud Powers Saudi AI Growth at LEAP 2025

Huawei Cloud is accelerating Saudi Arabia’s AI leadership with its Riyadh Region, reinforcing the Kingdom’s commitment to data sovereignty and AI-driven innovation. At LEAP 2025, the company highlighted how its advanced infrastructure and AI capabilities empower businesses to develop locally relevant solutions tailored to regional needs.

Launched in September 2023, the Huawei Cloud Riyadh Region has rapidly become a key hub for AI development across the Middle East, Central Asia, and Africa. Its 3AZ (Availability Zone) architecture delivers industry-leading latency rates of 25ms within Saudi Arabia and 100ms across the broader region. Strengthening its position, Huawei Cloud secured a Class C license from Saudi Arabia’s Communications, Space, and Technology Commission (CST) in 2023 and joined the Saudi government’s National Framework Agreement (NFA V2.0) in December 2024, enabling seamless cloud service procurement by government entities.

Alan Qi, President of Huawei Cloud Middle East and Central Asia, emphasized the company’s role in transforming enterprise intelligence. He highlighted that Huawei Cloud’s Riyadh Region provides the foundation for Saudi Arabia to develop AI solutions aligned with its unique needs and values. With over 1,000 customers across key sectors, the company continues to lead in delivering cutting-edge AI capabilities that are reshaping the market.

At LEAP 2025, Huawei Cloud showcased AI-powered innovations designed to drive efficiency and intelligence across industries. The company’s flagship Pangu Model 5.0 enables businesses to deploy customized AI solutions using a hierarchical “5+N+X” architecture, ensuring adaptability to evolving industry requirements. Huawei Cloud DataArts, a one-stop intelligent data governance solution, offers advanced AI-powered analytics, cloud-native data lake services, and distributed database GaussDB to enhance data-driven decision-making. The newly released Huawei Cloud Stack 8.5 introduces over 120 locally deployable cloud services, significantly improving security, reliability, and AI engineering capabilities.

Huawei Cloud follows a dual AI innovation strategy with “Cloud for AI, AI for Cloud.” Cloud for AI leverages cloud infrastructure to build powerful AI model capabilities, while AI for Cloud integrates AI into Huawei Cloud’s own development processes, benefiting industries such as finance, media, and telecommunications. The company’s three-layer cloud service architecture includes Infrastructure-as-a-Service via KooVerse, Technology-as-a-Service with AI development tools like ModelArts, and Experience-as-a-Service (aPaaS), which delivers industry-specific AI solutions across government, finance, and manufacturing.

Lawrence Liu, CEO of Huawei Cloud Saudi Arabia, reaffirmed the company’s commitment to fostering local innovation and talent. He outlined Huawei’s five-year plan to develop 200,000 developers, collaborate with 1,000 local partners, and support 2,000 startups in Saudi Arabia, aligning with the Kingdom’s Vision 2030.

Huawei Cloud’s impact is evident across industries, with success stories such as StarzPlay, which leveraged Huawei Cloud’s full-stack serverless architecture to support 3.2 million paid users during the Cricket World Cup. In e-commerce, Saudi retailer Zode achieved ultra-low latency of 25ms, enhancing user experience. Fintech leader Cashin improved response times by 35%, operational efficiency by 40%, and reduced total ownership costs by 30%.

With AI and cloud computing playing a pivotal role in Saudi Arabia’s digital transformation, Huawei Cloud is at the forefront of enabling enterprises to harness AI-driven innovation while maintaining data sovereignty.