https://arab.news/mvsnc
In Riyadh, artificial intelligence is no longer a future ambition but a strategic priority, spoken of with the same weight as infrastructure, security, and state capacity. Vision 2030 has positioned AI as inevitable to the Kingdom’s future.
Sumanta Roy, president and regional CEO for Middle East and Africa at Tata Consultancy Services, said the company is approaching this moment with the ambition of becoming the world’s largest AI-led technology services company. He described it as preparation built over the years, pointing to a global pool of around 217,000 employees with higher order AI skills, qualified to design and implement AI solutions across industries. This talent base, he said, positions TCS to support Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 priorities, including smart cities and digitized government services.
Mastering AI the TCS way
TCS redefines how enterprises in the Middle East and Africa harness the power of AI, innovation, and transformation, with a mission to empower governments, businesses, and communities to drive sustainable growth through responsible AI adoption.
Roy said that their strategy lies in three core priorities: customer-centric growth, investing deeply in their people, and strengthening an innovation ecosystem that moves with speed and scale. To bring this to life, TCS is working on a five‑pillar AI strategy — transforming internally, reimagining every service with the influence of AI, building a future‑ready talent model, helping clients realize AI value in their businesses, and expanding their ecosystem through partnerships and acquisitions.
TCS has a clear ambition. They want to be a trusted partner for clients across the full AI stack, from infrastructure all the way to intelligence. They established HyperVault in 2025 with a vision to deliver gigawatt-scale secure, reliable, large-scale AI-ready infrastructure for hyperscalers and AI-driven organizations. As per their third quarter report, AI services reached an annualized $1.8 billion, which is a strong indicator of how quickly clients are adopting to their full‑stack AI capabilities.
Building trustworthy AI
Roy cited citizen engagement, predictive maintenance, fraud detection, and intelligent automation as areas where AI is relevant inside Saudi institutions. He also pointed to a barrier often understated in global AI conversations: language. Arabic, he noted, carries complexity that many large language models were not built to handle. Most LLMs are trained natively in English, while Saudi Arabia requires AI trained in Arabic, including dialect differences and the challenge of limited annotated datasets. This, he said, makes it harder to build advanced AI applications and train models capable of serving Saudi institutions with accuracy. TCS is leveraging its global expertise as well as collaborating with researchers to develop Arabic language models and solutions designed for this reality, work Roy described as a potential blueprint for other GCC countries facing similar linguistic constraints.
AI adoption is key
TCS has established the Gemini Experience Zone, created with Google at its Pace Studio in Riyadh, to help Saudi government entities and enterprises test AI ideas quickly and develop proof-of-concepts before committing to larger deployments. The aim is to reduce the friction that slows AI adoption, particularly where structural and linguistic barriers exist, and enable Saudi Arabia’s transition to an AI-led economy.
AI upskilling is the need of the hour
Generative AI dominates headlines, but Roy said the real challenge begins when organizations attempt deployment. He described the “valley of death” as the gap between a proof-of-concept and a full-scale enterprise rollout. Many organizations fail at this stage, he said, because they struggle to move from experimentation into production in a safe and governed manner.
TCS has consolidated learnings from 5,000+ AI projects worldwide into frameworks, tools, and AI agents designed to support predictable and responsible AI adoption. Roy said these assets help enterprises move into deployment while maintaining compliance, security and scalability. He also pointed to a delivery approach TCS has pioneered, RAPID Build, combining adaptive coding (AI-assisted iterative development) and iterative development. This approach, he said, has enabled enterprise-grade solutions within three months for several global clients, supporting faster execution within Saudi organizations.
TCS driving Saudi Arabia’s vision
TCS is building more than 1 GW of AI-ready data center capacity, supported by advanced GPU infrastructure, to enable secure, scalable and sustainable AI workloads. It is embedding ethical and responsible practices through applying its AI Assurance approach, aimed at detecting bias, improving explainability, and implementing governance across the AI lifecycle.
Roy said the Kingdom’s AI future will be shaped by talent development, partnerships, local innovation environments, and the ability to move beyond demonstrations into systems that hold under pressure. TCS intends to support this next phase by combining AI talent, enterprise frameworks, strategic partnerships, and innovation spaces designed for Saudi institutions seeking modernization without compromising trust.