IDC projects Saudi AI buyer spending to grow from $2.72 billion in 2025 to $7.83 billion in 2029 and even amid regional uncertainty since March 2026, Saudi enterprises are reallocating rather than cutting IT budgets, with cybersecurity and AI the only two of ten tracked categories where a clear majority increased planned spending.
Realizing these ambitions means navigating a landscape shaped by regional geopolitical developments, data residency and in-Kingdom hosting requirements, and dependencies on global technology and semiconductor supply chains. Readiness also lags ambition: only 50% of Saudi organizations consider themselves well prepared for AI, with data quality, governance, and security the leading barriers to scaling. These gaps shape near-term decisions on infrastructure investment, vendor selection, and data governance.
Drawing on IDC’s latest research, this virtual event examines AI spending and adoption in the Kingdom, what geopolitical shifts mean for enterprise technology decisions, and how to build resilient, secure and compliant AI environments.
By 2029 Saudi Arabia's AI buyer spending to reach USD 7.83 Billion.
AI at scale: from pilot to enterprise deployment
MLOps pipelines, governance controls and operating practices to run AI reliably in production.
Data sovereignty, governance and interoperability
Data classification rules and in-Kingdom requirements reshape architecture, from residency to hybrid cloud.
Cloud and AI infrastructure readiness
What teams need in place on connectivity, data classification and infrastructure before scaling AI workloads.
Cyber resilience and business continuity
Infrastructure, disaster recovery and continuity strategies that keep operations running through disruption.
Generative and agentic AI: the next frontier
The guardrails, orchestration and hybrid model deployments that make agentic AI production-ready.
Smart investment: balancing cost and innovation
FinOps tooling and spend discipline that sustain AI and resilience investment amid budget pressure.
Dr. Christopher Lee Marshall
Research Vice President, Worldwide Enterprise AI, IDC
Melih Murat
Associate Research Director, Artificial Intelligence (META), IDC
Designing infrastructure that meets local data rules without slowing deployment.
Practical controls for autonomous agents operating with production-level access
Architecting security and recovery capability into everyday operations.
Using predictive and autonomous capabilities to protect continuity.
12:20PM – 12:30PM
12:30PM – 12:40PM
12:40PM – 12:50PM
12:20PM – 12:30PM
12:30PM – 12:40PM
12:40PM – 2:50PM
Research Vice President, Worldwide Enterprise AI
IDC
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Associate Research Director, Artificial Intelligence (META)
IDC
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Dr. Chris Marshall is Program Vice President for IDC Asia Pacific, responsible for the Analytics, Big Data and Artificial Intelligence practice. Dr. Marshall’s core research coverage includes the development of Data Analytics and Machine Learning competencies and their implications – the threats and opportunities facing organizations as they seek to augment and automate their knowledge-based work.
Previously, Chris was a senior executive in IBM Watson Financial Services where he led their AI-enabled risk and analytics practice in Asia. Before joining IBM, he held senior business development and management roles in big data and analytics at KPMG, Oracle and UBS.
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.
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