#SaudiArabia #investment - Snowflake has announced a projected $300 million (about SAR 1.125 billion) investment in Saudi Arabia through 2030. TheUS data cloud company also formally inaugurated its Riyadh-based regional headquarters for the Middle East, Turkey and Africa (META). Working with the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT), it will expand local hiring and its partner network, launch two more Saudi cloud regions in the second half of 2026, and train up to 25,000 learners in data and AI skills by 2030.
SO WHAT? - Data residency and sovereignty has become a pre-requisite for Saudi enterprises and rapid adoption of AI has made that demand increasingly urgent. Snowflake announced general availability of its AI Data Cloud via Google’s Dammam cloud region in December 2024. The company is now getting ready to launch two additional cloud regions in Saudi Arabia on top of the Google Cloud service, giving customers greater flexibility and choice in sovereign cloud services.
KEY POINTS:
Snowflake, the AI Data Cloud company listed on the NYSE, announced a projected $300 million investment in Saudi Arabia through 2030. The figure comes from an independent IDC analysis of Snowflake’s projected economic impact and customer value in the Kingdom.
Snowflake formally inaugurated its Middle East, Turkey and Africa regional headquarters in Riyadh, which was established in 2024. The headquarters will keep growing its local team, building the regional partner ecosystem and widening broader operations in the Kingdom.
Snowflake will add two cloud regions in Saudi Arabia ‘in the second half of 2026’, alongside its existing Google Cloud Dammam region. The multi-cloud setup is designed to help customers meet data residency and sovereignty requirements.
Snowflake and MCIT will jointly deliver the One Million Minds programme, which aims to upskill up to 25,000 people over five years. Training combines virtual and in-person sessions on the Snowflake platform, with certificates and real-world data and AI projects.
The programme will bring Snowflake Academia to the Middle East for the first time, helping universities add current data and AI technologies to their curricula. Participants also get mentorship through the Saudi Arabia Data and AI Community.
MCIT, which supports technology companies investing in the local market, will connect Snowflake with local entities and help it scale operations. The ministry is pursuing a cloud-first policy to drive digital transformation and local skills development.
The announcement cites General Authority for Statistics figures showing AI use among Saudi businesses rose 20 percent year on year in 2025. Snowflake argues this increases demand for secure, governed access to enterprise data.
Snowflake’s Saudi customers include Red Sea Global, O3sigma, Zahid Group, Almarai, Foodics, Rime and Jeeny. Globally, the company has more than 14,500 customers, including hundreds of the world’s largest companies.
Snowflake launched in Saudi Arabia in December 2024 with the Riyadh headquarters and general availability on Google Cloud, in response to the Kingdom’s Personal Data Protection Law (PDPL) of 2023.
ZOOM OUT - NYSE-listed US cloud data and enterprise AI company Snowflake has moved purposefully from data warehousing into AI. Its AI Data Cloud runs on AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, and now carries Snowflake Cortex AI intelligence and agent tools. The company expects about $6.07 billion for the current fiscal year, which ends January 31st, 2027. Meanwhile, existing customers currently expand their usage by around 125 percent per year (net revenue retention), and a five-year, $6 billion AWS partnership backs further growth. More than 14,500 customers use Snowflake, and the Middle East is a fast-growing part of that base.
[Written and edited with the assistance of AI]
Source: Snowflake