Qualcomm Technologies announced on Wednesday it teamed up with Saudi Aramco and the Saudi Arabia Research, Development, and Innovation Authority (RDIA) to launch a major tech-centric initiative.
Named Design in Saudi Arabia (DISA), the new incubator programme aims to facilitate Saudi Arabia’s role as a supportive force for artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), and other wireless tools.
The incubator will back industrial use cases for early-stage startups by providing guidance across their product lifecycles, including design, development, and commercialisation.
Additionally, the initiative will offer technical assistance, coaching, and intellectual property (IP) training to startups across Saudi Arabia’s tech industry, building the nation’s ecosystem by leveraging Qualcomm, Aramco, and the RDIA’s depth of experience, guidance, and funding.
Qualcomm’s 4G, 5G, IoT, AI, and machine learning (ML) technologies will merge with Saudi Aramco’s Accelerated Innovation Lab (SAIL), which offers entrants access to grants, support, and laboratory facilities, it explained.
It will then allow them to work with Qualcomm for business opportunities in a bid to “diversify the Kingdom’s economy, support local content, and create innovative growth opportunities.”
Such efforts will coincide with the RDIA’s ethos of boosting national research, develop, and innovation for the Kingdom’s tech ecosystem.
Wassim Chourbaji, Senior Vice-President and President, Qualcomm MEA, Qualcomm Technologies, stated that his company was “excited” to play a major role in building next-generational tech innovation across the Kingdom.
“By meeting the unique needs of the Kingdom, we aim to propel it into a future of advanced digital transformation,” he said in a statement.
Nabil a Al Nuaim, Senior Vice President, Digital and IT, Aramco, added that his enterprise aimed to “establish a robust digital superhighway” connecting startups with Aramco’s “resources and market opportunities.”
He concluded,
“This initiative is designed to accelerate digital transformation, helping to foster a globally impactful ecosystem that meets the current market needs and anticipates future challenges. By bringing together top talents, we are setting the stage for new ventures.”
Qualcomm recently kicked off similar programmes across Asian and African nations, which have supported 226 startups and led to over 800 filed startup patents, with 300 granted.
The Santa Clara-based firm also launched its Ventures and Wireless Reach initiative programmes to further assist startups.
Everything to GAIN: Saudi Arabia Backs AI at Key Event
The news comes after the US tech giant and the Kingdom’s largest oil and gas (O&G) firm attended the Global AI Summit (GAIN), which took place from 10 to 12 September.
HRH Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud hosted the event at the King Abdulaziz International Convention Centre in Riyadh. Crisitiano Amon, President and CEO, Qualcomm, also joined the event.
At the Summit, thought leaders, executives, and consultants explored six key strategic areas: AI convergence, Silicon Oasis, talent transformation, data-application nexus, AI Future, and productive governance.
Many of the topics surrounding AI included governance, ethics, use cases and applications, and their future relationships to humanity and industry.
Both firms later unveiled their initiative, which will roll out three key generative AI industrial solutions consisting of the following solutions:
- Factory Monitoring to boost operational safety and efficiency via on-device generative AI solutions. These will provide high-level video security and surveillance for “real-time insights and predictive analytics” to safeguard workers, equipment, and infrastructure as well as boost performance.
- Rapid Response with autonomous AI-powered drones, complete with generative AI flight controls for quick deployments to onsite incidences. The initiative will also employ on-device AI and computer vision tools to reduce operational downtimes, lower disruptions, and boost awareness.
- Equipment Maintenance with multimodal inputs, hybrid AI, and on-device and edge cloud AI computing to assist workers. This will also effectively limit equipment downtime and failures, and boost performance.
D×M Analysis: Aramco’s Strength in Diversification
To date, Aramco is, essentially, a vanguard enterprise in the Kingdom with the capital, connections, and capabilities to launch such a transformation.
One of the strongest initial motivating forces for Aramco is the need to boost efficiency and save critical revenues, namely to reduce equipment downtime and inefficiency in its upstream and downstream processes.
The Kingdom has long pushed to diversify the economy and eventually transition to a greener economy via its Vision 2030 Plan.
Under the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund’s Green Finance Framework, it aims to boost green initiatives with financial support and reduce its Net Zero carbon emissions by the year 2060. From an initial year of 2019, it also plans to eliminate over 278m tonnes of CO₂ by 2030.
Emerging technologies will become critical to achieve this, as outlined in a recent keynote speech from Carl Ennis, UK&I Chief Executive, Siemens.
In addition to reaching these milestones, the Kingdom is also aware that revenues may fall year-on-year as global powers adhere to the Paris Agreement, leading to reduced dependency on fossil fuels.
This may reflect last year’s earnings reported in March, where Aramco saw its sales drop to $121.3bn in 2023, compared to $161.1bn the year before.
Revenues also dipped to $440.9bn, a 17 percent drop from $535.2bn the previous year.
Despite this, it recorded its second-largest profits in history and also paid out massive sums to both the Government and stakeholders dividends, totalling $31bn.
Aramco blamed the lower earnings in a statement on “lower crude oil prices and volumes sold, as well as reduced refining and chemicals margins, partially offset by a decrease in production royalties during the year and lower income taxes and zakat.”
In order to offset the fluctuating demand for petroleum products, Saudi Aramco may aim to leverage Qualcomm’s smart technologies to maximise efficiency as much as possible, eliminating the most onerous cost of repairing equipment, staff injuries, and infrastructure degradation.
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Doing this could save them billions each year, which will inevitably return to shareholders and the Saudi Government, boosting balance sheets.
Countries across the world are leveraging the industrial metaverse to do the same, and Saudi Arabia is no stranger to this key player in industry.
For example, it joined Nokia at the Leap 2023 event to improve 5G-enabled digital transformations for heavy industries, businesses, and consumers.
Thierry E Klein, President of Bell Labs Solutions Research, Nokia Bell Labs explained to me in a recennt interview his company planned to increase efficiency for 5G and next-generational 6G networks, facilitating sustainability for national power grids and efficiency for users.
He said at the time,
“We must increase network capacity while reducing energy use and optimize our communications footprint while limiting our environmental impact.”
This also addresses network consumption, which would need to support “peak capacities 10 times higher than today’s 5G networks,” he added.
He explained in greater detail,
“To create truly sustainable networks in the 6G era, we need to look at the environmental impacts of every aspect of 6G systems. Reaching these energy-efficiency gains will require new technologies in every aspect of the radio access network (RAN) from the power amplifier and antenna design to the processing architecture, algorithms and overall network topology.”
According to Klein, the first 6G networks would not become commercially available until roughly 2030.
“We must begin making decisions for the future now,” he concluded.
I would strongly believe that, through the initiative, Saudi Arabia will need to leverage the potential of every emerging technology relevant to its Vision 2030 plan to meet this timeline and further cement its economy as a leading national power in the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region.
Saudi Arabia now competes with regional powers like the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Israel, Turkey, and, under a new BRICS initiative, Iran.
Again, it will use its DISA programme with Qualcomm, Aramco, and the RDIA to form a multifaceted approach to economic diversification to:
- Optimise current O&G upstream and downstream refinery processes to mimimise inefficiencies by leveraging emerging technologies such as AI, IoT, blockchain, automation, robotics, VR/ AR, and others.
- Likely drive innovation and growth in emerging economies such as the MENA region by using Qualcomm’s Snapdragon enabled tools, building a set of industrial metaverse use cases and document empirical metrics.
- Upgrade and scale up its telecoms grid to accommodate smart grid, IoT, and industrial metaverse tools needed to achieve ultrafast, low-latency performance at factories and facilities.
- Build an economy centred on transitioning to Net Zero emission targets as outlined in the Paris Agreement, whether through emission trading schemes (ETSs), carbon capture, or renewable energy sources.
- Facilitate a new economy based on emerging technologies as outlined in the Kingdom’s Vision 2030 programme.
- Compete with MENA regional powers in the race to develop the largest transitioned emerging economy.
I am excited to see how this triple alliance will pull off this initiative.
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