IDC & HCLTech Roundtable: How to Turn AI Ambition into AI Impact
In Partnership With
Overview
Saudi Arabia’s AI buyer spending is set to grow to $7.43 billion by 2029, at a compound annual growth rate of roughly 54%. Vision 2030 and the Kingdom’s $100 billion AI investment fund have made adoption a national mandate. Bridging that ambition and the realities of execution centers on five decisions CIOs have to make today: governance, legacy infrastructure, cost and consumption economics, sovereign AI, and model choice.
Yet, only half of Saudi organizations consider themselves well prepared to capture AI’s full value, a gap corroborated by HCLTech’s 2026 AI Impact Imperatives report, which found that enterprises globally expect nearly half of major AI initiatives launched in the next 24 months to fail.
IDC and HCLTech are convening a closed-door roundtable for CIOs, CISOs, and senior digital transformation leaders across Saudi Arabia’s enterprise landscape. Drawing on HCLTech’s global delivery experience and IDC’s regional research, the discussion focuses on practical strategies to make these five decisions well and accelerate measurable outcomes.
Attendees leave with a framework for sequencing modernization, structuring AI governance, and building a sovereign AI strategy that holds up as regulation tightens.
Key Learning Outcomes Include
A governance model built for the future
With Saudi Arabia’s PDPL enforcement active, leave with a governance framework you can deploy now that still holds when SDAIA’s AI-specific rules land.
Understand why AI initiatives stall in the Kingdom
Only 34% of Saudi organizations report AI strategies fully linked to business objectives with continuous measurement. Benchmark your own initiatives against what’s actually driving that gap.
A sovereign AI strategy you can defend to your board
With national investment in homegrown models and infrastructure accelerating, get a full picture on what sovereignty actually requires and how to build it into your AI roadmap.
A realistic path from pilot to production for agentic AI
Just 32% of Saudi organizations have moved beyond single-agent, human-in-the-loop deployments. Leave with a sequencing plan for scaling responsibly.
Agenda
IDC & HCLTech Roundtable: How to Turn AI Ambition into AI Impact
One Day Event
Registration & Networking
IDC Keynote: The AI impact gap in Saudi Arabia
Opens with IDC’s own Saudi Arabia AI Perspective research: where AI investment is scaling fastest in the Kingdom, where readiness and governance lag behind ambition, and what separates initiatives that reach production from those stuck in pilot.
Melih Murat
Associate Research Director, Artificial Intelligence (META), IDC
Scaling with confidence: Sovereign AI, Model choice and Economics
Building a sovereign AI strategy, choosing the right model mix, structuring cost and consumption economics, and operationalizing agentic AI at enterprise scale.
Operationalizing agentic AI at enterprise scale, governed by design
Thomas De Vos
Principal AI Architect, HCLTech
Governing agentic AI in the Kingdom: From Pilot to Production
Senior technology leaders debate the real trade-offs of scaling agentic AI in Saudi Arabia: what sovereign AI investment actually requires, who owns governance, and how to justify the spend to the board.
Melih Murat
Associate Research Director, Artificial Intelligence (META), IDC
Thomas De Vos
Principal AI Architect, HCLTech
Q&A
Lunch & Networking
Speakers
Melih Murat
Associate Research Director, Artificial Intelligence (META)
IDC
Read bio
Melih Murat
In his role as associate research director for IT services and software across the Middle East, Turkey, and Africa (META), Melih drives IDC’s regional research and consulting engagements in the areas of IT services, Cloud, artificial intelligence (AI), and intelligent automation.
He first joined IDC in 2012 as a senior research analyst located out of IDC’s Istanbul office, with various responsibilities for the firm’s IT services, cloud computing, software, and telecom domains — both in Turkey and across the wider META region. Between 2016 and 2021, Melih headed the international marketing and investor relations practice at P.I. Works, a global automation and AI software vendor that serves telecom operators.
Now back at IDC, Melih is leveraging his vast experience in the IT services, cloud, software, and telecommunications domains to advise clients on go-to-market strategies, technology marketing and promotion activities, and market trends analysis. He is also driving a wide variety of research and consulting projects across the META region.
Melih has also previously served as enterprise channel and marketing manager at Nortel Turkey and as business development and strategy manager at Netaş, one of the leading systems integrators in Turkey and a former Nortel subsidiary. He possesses a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and received his MBA from Esslingen University of Applied Sciences in Germany. He has worked as a business development specialist at HP and wrote his MBA thesis for the company, covering European retail channel trends and winning strategies for channel businesses.
Event Sessions
One Day Event 12:15 pm
Governing agentic AI in the Kingdom: From Pilot to Production
Senior technology leaders debate the real trade-offs of scaling agentic AI in Saudi Arabia: what sovereign AI investment actually requires, who owns governance, and how to justify the spend to the board.
One Day Event 11:30 am
IDC Keynote: The AI impact gap in Saudi Arabia
Opens with IDC’s own Saudi Arabia AI Perspective research: where AI investment is scaling fastest in the Kingdom, where readiness and governance lag behind ambition, and what separates initiatives that reach production from those stuck in pilot.
Thomas De Vos
Principal AI Architect
HCLTech
Read bio
Thomas De Vos
Thomas De Vos is a Principal AI Architect at HCLTech, where he designs agentic AI and GenAI solutions for enterprise clients and leads AI engineering across the practice. He is the author of two books on production AI: Claude Code: Building Production Agents That Actually Scale, a Leanpub best-seller covering the full stack from agent loop to evals, permissions, and cost engineering, and Securing Enterprise AI Agents, a field guide to bounded autonomy, MCP security, and AgentSecOps in regulated environments. Both draw on his 25 years in enterprise technology across financial services and telecoms, from digital banking platforms and fraud detection systems to cloud and AI architecture for some of the sector’s largest firms.
Event Sessions
One Day Event 12:15 pm
Governing agentic AI in the Kingdom: From Pilot to Production
Senior technology leaders debate the real trade-offs of scaling agentic AI in Saudi Arabia: what sovereign AI investment actually requires, who owns governance, and how to justify the spend to the board.
One Day Event 11:50 am
Scaling with confidence: Sovereign AI, Model choice and Economics
Building a sovereign AI strategy, choosing the right model mix, structuring cost and consumption economics, and operationalizing agentic AI at enterprise scale.
Operationalizing agentic AI at enterprise scale, governed by design
In Partnership With
HCLTech
HCLTech is a global technology company, home to more than 227,000 people across 60 countries, delivering industry-leading capabilities centered around AI, digital, engineering, cloud and software, powered by a broad portfolio of technology services and products. We work with clients across all major verticals, providing industry solutions for Financial Services, Manufacturing, Life Sciences and Healthcare, Technology and Services, Semiconductor, Telecom and Media, Retail and CPG, Mobility and Public Services. Consolidated revenues as of 12 months ending March 2026 totaled $14.7 billion. To learn how we can supercharge progress for you, visit hcltech.com.