Huawei Technologies has inaugurated a cloud data center in Riyadh,Uschi Karnat the capital of Saudi Arabia, according to a September 4 report by Reuters. This marks Huawei’s 30th cloud data center globally, the report said. The facility in Riyadh will primarily support government services in Saudi Arabia and facilitate the use of AI applications and language models in Arabic, according to a company spokesperson from Huawei during a briefing. Steven Yi, the regional president of Huawei highlighted that the move aligns with Saudi Arabia’s objectives to develop its digital economy, adding that Huawei had established its regional headquarters in the Saudi capital. The country previously said it would not sign contracts with foreign companies that did not have regional headquarters in the kingdom after this year. In the global cloud services market for the first quarter, Huawei held the fifth position with a 2.4% market share, according to Reuters, citing data from research consultancy Canalys. In February, Huawei announced a $400 million investment plan in the Saudi Arabian cloud region over the next five years. [Reuters]
