First Saudi sovereign AI inference service platform launched
New inference platform Bunyan ensures data sovereignty and compliance
#SaudiArabia #compute - Saudi Arabia AI infrastructure technology provider OmniOps has launched Bunyan (بنيان), the Kingdom's first home-grown sovereign Inference-as-a Service platform, following discussions with Communications and Information Technology Minister H.E. Abdullah Amer Alswaha. The Riyadh-based company's platform delivers GPU-agnostic cutting-edge AI capabilities across text, vision, and speech applications, whilst achieving performance improvements including increased inference speed, over 50% energy consumption reduction, and at least 40% latency reduction (over traditional solutions). Bunyan also ensures that sensitive data remains within compliance mandated boundaries, supporting Saudi Arabia's National Strategy for Data and AI across government, energy, aviation, and healthcare sectors.
SO WHAT? - Saudi Arabia’s rapid increase in adoption of AI platforms is leading to a massive acceleration in demand for AI inferencing. However, data sovereignty remain a top concern of government entities and large private sector enterprises, who want to harness the power of Generative AI, but also need regulated environments. The new Bunyan Inferencing-as-a-Service platform enables allows organisations to maintain data sovereignty by storing and managing information across virtual and on-premise facilities, regardless of the underlying hardware.
Here are some key points about this announcement:
Saudi Arabia’s first home-grown AI infrastructure technology provider OmniOps has launched Bunyan (بنيان), the Kingdom's first locally developed sovereign Inference-as-a Service platform, allowing customers to run services across on-premise infrastructure and public cloud services, such as GroqCloud.
The announcement followed a strategic meeting with Saudi Arabia’s Communications and Information Technology Minister Abdullah Amer Alswaha, during which OmniOps got to introduce and demo the Banyan platform as a potential solution for government entities.
The GPU-agnostic platform offers increased inference speed, an over 50% reduction in energy consumption, and at least 40% latency reduction compared to traditional AI infrastructure deployment methods.
Bunyan provides an end-to-end AI infrastructure stack supporting text, vision, and speech applications through unified model catalog access to large language models, speech recognition, and computer vision technologies.
The platform allows organisations to maintain data sovereignty by storing and managing information across virtual and on-premise facilities, whilst maintaining compliance with regulatory boundaries and national data protection requirements. Bunyan SaaS is 100% hosted in Saudi Arabia/.
The platform enables organisations to create and deploy custom AI models with simplified deployment, whilst hosting on advanced AI infrastructure hardware including NVIDIA and Groq processing units.
Bunyan allows enterprises to create AI-driven applications to automate business processes with agentic workflows, using both public and private AI models and enabling organisations to maintain control over sensitive data whilst accessing cutting-edge AI capabilities
The platform also offers AI data centre operators another option to deliver Inference-as-a-Service to their regulated customers.
OmniOps, founded in 2024, provides AI infrastructure solutions across on-premises, cloud, and edge environments, targeting businesses across Saudi Arabia's critical sectors including government, energy, aviation, and healthcare.
ZOOM OUT - Founded in May 2024, OmniOps secured SAR 30 million ($8m) in strategic anchor investment from Riyadh-based technology venture capital firm GMS Capital Ventures in December. The funding supports scaling operations and research and development as Saudi Arabia experiences rapid AI adoption. The government is currently using various strategies to build massive compute capacity, with hyperscalers including Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Oracle committing over $15 billion in data centre investment by 2030. OmniOps has established partnerships with technology giants including NVIDIA, Google Cloud, and IBM whilst serving major clients such as Saudi Airlines and CNTXT, positioning the young company to capture significant market share in the Kingdom's expanding AI infrastructure sector through sovereign solutions that reduce GPU power consumption by up to 50%.
[Written and edited with the assistance of AI]
Read more about OmniOps:
OmniOps secures $8 million to scale AI infrastructure (Middle East AI News)