Salam signs SAR 22.5 m 5-year connectivity deal with Saudi EV maker CEER
Etihad Salam Telecom Company has signed a five-year agreement worth SAR 22.5 million, approximately $6 million, to supply internet and dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) fibre services to CEER National Automotive Company, Saudi Arabia's first electric vehicle brand and original equipment manufacturer. The deal was announced on Sunday at LEAP 2026 in Riyadh, where Salam is a strategic sponsor.
The contract gives CEER high-capacity connectivity across its design, development, manufacturing and distribution operations, and designates Salam as a preferred provider of connectivity services to the carmaker. CEER is a joint venture between the Public Investment Fund and Foxconn, with BMW supplying vehicle development and manufacturing expertise, and it is scheduled to begin commercial production at its King Abdullah Economic City complex in the fourth quarter of this year.
Johnny Saldanha, Chief Procurement and Supply Chain Officer at CEER, said that “reliable, high-performance connectivity is a prerequisite for everything from design and manufacturing through to distribution and customer experience”. The company has spent the past two years assembling a supplier base for a plant designed to produce around 240,000 vehicles a year at full capacity, with a target of 45% local content by 2034.
The value of the agreement is modest against CEER's larger supply chain commitments, which include a SAR 8.2 billion contract with Hyundai Transys for electric drive systems and more than SAR 3.7 billion in localisation agreements signed at the fourth PIF Private Sector Forum in February. What the deal signals is the point at which connectivity moves from a corporate IT line item into the category of plant infrastructure, sitting alongside power and logistics in the procurement stack of a manufacturing operation that runs digital twins, connected production lines and over-the-air vehicle software.
For CEER, whose vehicles are being built around Foxconn's electrical architecture with infotainment, connectivity and autonomous driving features at their centre, the network commitment extends beyond the factory floor. “In Salam, we found a partner that understands the scale of what we are building and has the infrastructure and expertise to support it,” Saldanha said, adding that the agreement “gives us the foundation we need to focus on what we do best, which is delivering world-class electric vehicles under a proudly Saudi brand”.
The agreement is the most visible test so far of Salam's B2B 2.0 strategy, launched to sell integrated AI, 5G, cybersecurity, cloud and managed services to Saudi enterprises under a single commercial relationship. Salam has operated telecoms networks in the Kingdom since 2005 and has built much of its recent growth on government and carrier business, and the CEER contract gives it a reference account in the industrial sector at a moment when several PIF-backed manufacturing ventures are moving from construction into operation.
Abdullah Khorami, Chief Business Officer at Salam, said the deal demonstrates “what Salam's B2B 2.0 strategy is all about, which is forging deep, long-term partnerships with the companies that are building Saudi Arabia's future”. He added that “CEER is an automotive company that has also become a symbol of the Kingdom's industrial ambition, and we are proud to be the connectivity partner powering its journey”.
Whether that reference value converts into further industrial contracts will depend on how the market reads a five-year commitment of this size against the scale of the customer, in a telecoms sector where stc, Mobily and Zain KSA all hold considerably larger enterprise books.
