Inside Mannai's Saudi entry: a $65 billion market with 700 rivals holding the same licence

Mannai Information Technology Saudi Arabia opened a regional headquarters in Riyadh earlier this month, giving the technology arm of Qatar-listed Mannai Corporation QPSC a permanent base in the largest technology market in the Middle East. The company will sell into government, smart cities, banking, energy and utilities, healthcare, education and transport, competing against a field of several hundred established firms.

Mordor Intelligence values Saudi ICT at $65.45 billion in 2026, growing 9.13% annually to $101.30 billion by 2031, with IT services alone worth $20.09 billion in 2025 and forecast to reach $45.77 billion by 2030. Entry has been regulated since 1 January 2024, when multinationals seeking central government contracts were required to hold a regional headquarters licence carrying 30 years of 0% corporate income and withholding tax. 

The Royal Commission for Riyadh City reported more than 700 companies holding one by early 2026, against a Vision 2030 target of 500 by the end of the decade, so a Riyadh address confers eligibility and very little else.

Lakshimi Narayanan, General Manager, Mannai Information Technology Saudi Arabia, said the way Saudi organisations buy has changed underneath those rules. "The biggest shift is that Saudi organisations have stopped buying technology and started buying outcomes," he said.

"A few years ago the conversation was about products, licences and specifications. Today a client asks what a system will do for uptime, for citizen experience, for efficiency, and they expect one partner accountable for the answer instead of five vendors pointing at each other while each tries to sell its own product."

Saudi infrastructure spending is being cut back as Mannai commits to it

Contracts have followed that demand, with Mordor Intelligence recording the growth of outcome-based agreements in which the supplier carries delivery risk and needs the balance sheet to absorb it. Mannai reported first-half 2026 revenue of QR2.7 billion, up 29%, with net profit up 44% to QR101 million and the ICT business named among the main contributors. Narayanan said the work itself differs from what the company has done elsewhere.

"In most markets you retrofit intelligence into assets that already exist. Here, districts, venues and transport systems are being designed digitally native from the outset," he said. "Information technology and operational technology converge at the drawing board instead of years after handover, and that changes what a technology partner has to be capable of. You cannot serve that client with an agenda to sell a specific product; you have to be a trusted solution provider. 

He identified infrastructure as the sector moving fastest. "Nothing else in the Kingdom is changing at comparable speed or scale, the giga-projects, the sports and entertainment venues, the new districts, the transport and aviation infrastructure," Narayanan said. "And it is transforming twice over: physically, in what is being constructed, and digitally, in what is being embedded while it is constructed. We delivered integrated technology platforms for major stadium and venue infrastructure in Qatar for the 2022 World Cup, under real deadlines and external pressure such as Covid."

That record points towards Riyadh Expo 2030 and the 2034 World Cup, though the construction programme underneath it has shrunk. NEOM went unmentioned in the 2026 budget announced by Finance Minister Mohammed al-Jadaan, a first since 2017, and Semafor reported that its 2026 to 2030 budget includes SR60 billion in expected payments to terminate contractor agreements.

The Public Investment Fund approved cuts of at least 20% across its portfolio in December 2024 while narrowing towards logistics, mining and AI infrastructure, which keeps data centres, sovereign cloud and venue systems inside the funded half of the programme.

Local certification counts for more

IDC's ranking of the Kingdom's largest IT providers has been dominated by Saudi-founded firms, with Wipro and Tata Consultancy Services the only foreign names in the top 10. Analyst research published through Argaam puts solutions by stc at around 19% of the ICT market, with the Public Investment Fund its ultimate majority shareholder.

Mordor Intelligence has reported that firms holding Tier-III+ facilities certified by the Communications, Space and Technology Commission and the National Cybersecurity Authority receive fast-track treatment in government tenders, an advantage on which local specialists have built substantial businesses.

Alekh Grewal, Group Chief Executive Officer of Mannai Corporation QPSC, said the office is meant to build that standing over time. "Saudi Arabia is one of the region's largest and fastest-growing digital economies and the establishment of the regional headquarters in Riyadh represents a defining step in MIT KSA's local growth strategy," he said.

Khalid Mannai, Vice Chairman, Executive Committee, Mannai Corporation QPSC, said the Saudi business rests on the group's record. "MIT KSA's expansion is anchored in decades of trust, execution capability, and a consistent focus on delivering value-driven technology solutions across complex enterprise environments," he explained.

Narayanan set out three tracks for the operation. "The first is empowering young citizens by using the local talent pool and building genuine engineering, project management and support capability inside the Kingdom," he said. "The second is anchoring in the sectors where we have credible, demonstrable strength instead of chasing every opportunity: connected infrastructure and venues, enterprise platforms, cyber and managed services.

The third is our Vision 2030 programme, which we run under the banner of KSA Accelerate, creating more products developed in Saudi Arabia that will benefit the country as Saudi-made technology and can be rolled out in future to other countries in the region."

Every competitor in Riyadh is attempting the first of those. Mordor Intelligence records a 20% shortfall in security operations, AI engineering and cloud architecture skills, and finds Saudi nationals holding 18.6% of private-sector IT posts, with Korn Ferry estimating $33.6 billion in wage inflows by 2030 as employers compete for them.

"We plan to grow our Riyadh team over the coming year, with hiring focused on cybersecurity and cloud infrastructure specialists to support our expanding client base in the Kingdom," Narayanan said. The size of that Saudi engineering team a year from now, and whether KSA Accelerate produces software Saudi customers buy as a domestic product, will settle how the company is regarded in the Kingdom.