#SaudiArabia #LEAP5 - Saudi AI infrastructure company OmniOps has signed a memorandum of understanding with HPE at LEAP 2026 to develop sovereign AI solutions. The deal combines HPE’s locally manufactured infrastructure with OmniOps’ Saudi-developed AI platforms and deployment capabilities. The partnership aligns with HPE’s Saudi Made, Developed & Deployed (SMDD) initiative, aiming to build an end-to-end stack where servers, infrastructure and AI management software are all built and operated within the Kingdom.
SO WHAT? - Data and AI sovereignty often gets confused with data residency, which is simply keeping data within national borders. The HPE-OmniOps deal estends sovereign capabilities further down the stack. OmniOps’ founder Mohammed Altassan frames genuine sovereignty as needing answers to three separate questions, where data sits, who built the software managing it, and where the underlying hardware was made. For sectors like aviation, financial services and government, having a ‘Saudi answer’ to all three, rather than just the first, closes off a gap that data residency alone leaves open.
KEY POINTS:
OmniOps’ AI inference platform, Bunyan, lets organisations deploy and manage AI workloads across cloud, on-premises and air-gapped environments, giving access to leading LLMs hosted within Saudi Arabia alongside the infrastructure needed to adopt generative AI securely.
Bunyan’s hardware-agnostic architecture allows easy integration with locally produced compute from HPE, while still preserving customer choice across different AI infrastructure providers.
Customers across regulated industries increasingly require control and transparency over where their data sits, who built the software running on top of it, and where the underlying hardware comes from.
Mohammad Alrehaili, VP and Managing Director for the Middle East at HPE, said the collaboration brings HPE’s Saudi Made, Developed & Deployed vision to life, giving organisations in the Kingdom a foundation for deploying sovereign AI at scale.
The partnership aims to help government and enterprise organisations move from AI experimentation to production, with solutions validated, deployed and supported entirely within Saudi Arabia.
OmniOps is positioning itself as a leading Saudi AI infrastructure company. , Founded in 2024, the startup secured $8 million in pre-seed funding in December 2024 to scale its infrastructure to meet the challenge.
[Written and edited with the assistance of AI]
Source: OmniOps
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