Magna AI Builds Out Saudi Sovereign AI Stack With EEC Infrastructure Deal and Arabic.AI Partnership
Magna AI has signed two separate strategic agreements in Riyadh covering the physical infrastructure and the language intelligence layer of Saudi Arabia's sovereign AI build-out, confirming partnerships with Emaar Executive Company (EEC) and Arabic.AI. The company, established through a partnership between Trend Micro and Wistron Digital Technology Holding Company and powered by NVIDIA, confirmed the EEC agreement covers the planning, development and delivery of sovereign AI data centres and AI Factory infrastructure, while the Arabic.AI agreement targets the development of a sovereign Arabic large language model and Arabic-native AI platforms for government and enterprise use across the Kingdom.
Saudi Arabia's national digital transformation agenda has placed sovereign AI infrastructure at the centre of its long-term competitiveness plans, with data, models and the value they generate increasingly expected to remain under local control rather than dependent on platforms owned elsewhere. Sovereign AI data centres and AI Factories are positioned to let organisations train, fine-tune, deploy and operate advanced AI models while retaining control over data, workloads, governance and compliance.
EEC brings the physical infrastructure Saudi Arabia's AI ambitions require
The Magna AI and EEC framework, formalised in Riyadh by Dr. Moataz BinAli, Chief Executive Officer of Magna AI, and Karthik Ramaswamy, CEO of Emaar Executive Company, is designed to support the planning, development and delivery of sovereign AI data centres, AI Factory infrastructure and secure AI platforms across Saudi Arabia, with room to extend into wider MENA markets.
Under the arrangement, Magna AI will lead AI Factory architecture, platform development, and AI security and governance, while EEC delivers the engineering and construction backbone, including EPC execution, data centre construction, civil, mechanical, electrical and low-voltage systems integration, on-site project management, facility support and regulatory coordination. EEC's capabilities are underpinned by ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and ISO 45001 certifications alongside a dedicated in-Kingdom workforce.
“Sovereign AI is only as strong as the infrastructure beneath it, and that infrastructure has to be built and operated to the highest engineering standards, in-Kingdom,” BinAli said. “Emaar Executive Company brings the proven construction and engineering discipline to turn AI ambition into operational data centres on the ground. Together, we can give Saudi Arabia's government and enterprise organisations AI infrastructure they own, control and can scale with confidence.”
The collaboration is expected to run from the earliest stages of infrastructure development through to long-term operation, spanning site identification, feasibility studies and business-case development, systems integration for AI data centres, energy, cooling and sustainability optimisation, and compliant operations aligned with Saudi data residency and cybersecurity requirements. Ramaswamy framed the partnership as a response to the engineering rigour national-scale AI infrastructure demands: “Building national-scale AI infrastructure calls for engineering discipline, local capability and trusted delivery.
By combining our EPC systems-integration strengths with Magna's AI Factory expertise, we are positioned to build and operate the data centre infrastructure that underpins the Kingdom's AI agenda, to the standards national and enterprise institutions require.”
Arabic.AI brings the intelligence layer infrastructure cannot supply alone
Where the EEC deal covers the physical and operational backbone, the agreement with Arabic.AI targets the layer above it. The partnership was signed at the Global AI Show 2026 in Riyadh, with Arabic.AI contributing to the development of a sovereign Arabic large language model, agentic AI platforms, Arabic-native assistants, translation, optical character recognition and speech capabilities built for the linguistic, cultural and regulatory requirements of the Arabic-speaking world.
The two companies will explore collaboration across sovereign AI infrastructure and AI Factory development, Arabic-native AI platforms and applications, secure AI operations, AI transformation services, skills development and joint go-to-market initiatives.
Dr BinAli described sovereign infrastructure as necessary but incomplete on its own. “Saudi Arabia is building national AI capabilities at a pace very few countries can match, and the infrastructure supporting this progress must be sovereign, secure, and governed. But sovereign infrastructure is only one part of the equation. It must run intelligence that genuinely understands the language, context, and needs of the communities it serves,” he said. “Our collaboration with Arabic.AI addresses this important dimension.”
Nour Al Hassan, CEO of Tarjama and Arabic.AI, linked the partnership to nearly two decades of Arabic-language work through Tarjama. “AI for the Arabic-speaking world must be built with Arabic at its core,” Al Hassan said. “For nearly two decades, through Tarjama, we have worked at the intersection of Arabic language and technology, and that expertise is now embedded into a sovereign Arabic large language model built for governments and enterprises across the region.”
Taken individually, each agreement addresses a distinct gap in Saudi Arabia's AI build-out: EEC supplies the construction and systems-integration muscle that turns AI ambition into physical facilities, while Arabic.AI supplies the language and cultural fluency that determines whether the AI running inside those facilities is genuinely useful to the region it serves.
Confirmed in close succession and involving the same CEO on both sides of the Magna AI table, the pairing signals a company attempting to assemble infrastructure and intelligence as a single, coordinated offering rather than as separate transactions. Both agreements were signed at the Global AI Show 2026 in Riyadh, where Magna AI also showcased its full value-chain AI Factory, secure AI platform and sovereign AI capabilities to an audience of government and enterprise buyers.
