Noha Gad

AI adoption is accelerating rapidly across Saudi Arabia, driven by Vision 2030’s ambitions and supported by significant national investment and strong executive commitment. As organizations move from pilots toward enterprise-wide deployment, attention is turning to whether the operational foundations are in place to deliver results at scale.

As the global process context platform for enterprise AI deployment, ARIS works with organizations across Saudi Arabia and the broader Middle East to build the process context and governance that AI success depends on. 

Sharikat Mubasher held an interview with Ayham Alzaaim, senior vice president for Asia Pacific and Middle East at ARIS, on the sidelines of LEAP 2026 to learn more about how the company helps organizations deploy AI responsibly at scale.

In this interview, Alzaaim discussed the importance of process context in achieving progress, how organizations can move from traditional process management to real-time operational intelligence, the common pitfalls they face when scaling AI and automation, and why execution discipline will define AI leadership in the Kingdom and beyond.

ARIS believes that progress starts with process. In practical terms, how does process context directly translate into operational resilience and productivity gains for organizations?

Process context gives organisations a clear, trusted picture of how their operations actually work - who owns what, how decisions are made, where risks exist, and where inefficiencies are hiding. That visibility is the foundation of resilience. You cannot protect what you cannot see, and you cannot improve what you have not measured.

In practical terms, organisations that have built strong process context are able to respond to disruption faster, identify bottlenecks before they become crises, and deploy technology, including AI, with far greater confidence. The productivity gains come not from adding more tools but from finally understanding the operations those tools are meant to serve. For organisations across the Kingdom, that understanding is what turns Vision 2030's digital ambitions into measurable day-to-day outcomes.

Based on your experience across the Middle East, what does the journey from traditional process management to real-time operational intelligence look like for leading organizations—and what can the GCC learn from it?

The journey has three distinct stages. First, organisations map and govern their processes, creating a single trusted view of how the business actually operates. Second, they connect that foundation to real execution data so they can see how work flows in real time, not just how it was designed to flow. Third, they use that dynamic intelligence to drive continuous improvement and, increasingly, to deploy AI agents on a governed foundation.

What the GCC can take from leading organisations globally is that the sequence matters enormously. The organisations that try to skip to the third stage without completing the first two are the ones struggling to show AI returns. Those that invest in the foundation first move faster, govern better, and scale with confidence.

AI adoption is accelerating rapidly across the Middle East. What are the most common pitfalls organizations across the region face when attempting to scale AI and automation, and how can they avoid them?

The most common pitfall is deploying AI before the operational foundation is ready. Organisations invest in the technology, run a successful pilot, and then find that when they try to scale it across the enterprise, it breaks down. The reason is almost always the same: the AI does not have the process context it needs to operate reliably in a complex, live environment.

The way to avoid it is to treat process context as a prerequisite, not an afterthought. Before deploying AI at scale, organisations need to know how their processes actually work, who owns them, what rules govern them, and how performance is measured. When that foundation is in place, AI can be deployed with confidence and scaled without losing control. That is the execution discipline Vision 2030 demands, and the organisations that build it now will be the ones defining AI leadership in the Kingdom

LEAP 2026 is one of the region’s most significant technology platforms. From your perspective, what role do events like LEAP play in accelerating digital transformation across Saudi Arabia and the broader Middle East?

LEAP brings together government decision-makers, enterprise leaders, technology innovators, and investors under one roof in the heart of the Kingdom. That convergence accelerates transformation in ways that individual conversations cannot.

For ARIS, LEAP is where we have some of our most important conversations with organisations across the region. It is where strategy becomes concrete, where leaders who are thinking about AI transformation move into planning and action. The energy and ambition in the room reflect exactly where Saudi Arabia and the broader GCC are in their transformation journey right now.

Saudi Vision 2030 aims to position the Kingdom as a global AI hub. What is driving that momentum, and what should organizations across the Kingdom prioritize to accelerate that vision?

What is driving it is a combination of factors that very few countries can bring together simultaneously: clear national direction, significant investment, world-class infrastructure, and genuine executive decisiveness at both government and enterprise levels. Saudi Arabia is not just talking about AI leadership; it is building for it.

What organisations should prioritise now is execution discipline. The investment and the ambition are both firmly in place. The next phase is to ensure AI initiatives deliver measurable outcomes rather than impressive announcements. That means building the operational and governance foundations that allow AI to be deployed at scale, responsibly, and with control. Organisations that get that right now will not just contribute to Vision 2030; they will help define what AI leadership looks like globally.

Ghada Ismail

Large investment opportunities often require more than capital. They demand industry expertise, strategic insight, and effective risk management. Through a club deal, investors combine resources and experience to pursue opportunities that may be difficult to access individually. This approach is particularly common in private equity and real estate, where high-value transactions often benefit from collaboration.

What Is a Club Deal?

A club deal is an investment transaction in which a group of investors joins forces to finance or acquire an asset, company, or business. Rather than relying on one investor to provide all the necessary capital, participants contribute funds and share the investment according to agreed terms.

Participants may include private equity firms, institutional investors, family offices, and high-net-worth individuals. Beyond capital, they may contribute industry knowledge, management experience, or access to new markets.

Unlike a traditional investment fund, which pools capital to build a portfolio of assets, a club deal typically brings together a select group for a specific transaction.

For example, three private equity firms seeking to acquire a company valued at SAR 1 billion could each contribute part of the purchase price. They would then agree on ownership stakes, decision-making responsibilities, and how future returns would be distributed.

How Does a Club Deal Work?

The process usually begins when an investor identifies an opportunity that requires more capital or expertise than it can provide independently. It then approaches other investors with similar objectives to form a group.

The participants assess the opportunity, conduct due diligence, and negotiate the terms, including each investor's contribution, ownership share, and management responsibilities. They also establish how major decisions will be made, how disputes will be resolved, and what happens if a participant wants to exit.

Once the agreements are finalized, the investors provide the necessary funding and proceed with the transaction. Depending on the structure, they may manage the investment jointly or appoint a team to oversee operations.

Why Do Investors Use Club Deals?

Access to larger opportunities is a major reason why investors would pursue club deals. Pooling capital allows them to participate in transactions that might otherwise exceed their individual investment capacity.

Risk sharing is another advantage, as each participant assumes only part of the financial exposure. However, this does not eliminate the possibility of losses.

Club deals also bring together complementary expertise. One investor may understand a particular industry, while another offers operational experience or knowledge of a specific market. Combining these strengths can improve investment assessment and management.

For private equity firms, this approach can also enable larger acquisitions without concentrating too much capital in a single transaction.

What Are the Risks of a Club Deal?

Despite their advantages, club deals can become complicated when investors have conflicting priorities or management approaches.

Participants may disagree on business strategy, additional funding, the timing of an exit, or whether to sell an asset. Such differences can delay decisions and create tension without clear agreements.

The structure also involves legal negotiations and coordination among multiple parties. Investors must assess their partners' financial capacity, experience, and willingness to cooperate.

Control is another consideration. Smaller investors may have limited influence over major decisions despite committing substantial capital.

Clearly defined ownership rights, voting arrangements, exit provisions, and dispute-resolution mechanisms are therefore essential before a transaction closes.

To Wrap Things Up…

Club deals allow investors to pursue larger opportunities by combining capital, expertise, and market knowledge. However, success depends on more than financial contributions. The quality of the investment, alignment among participants, and clarity of their agreements all play a role. Ultimately, choosing the right partners is just as important as identifying the right opportunity.

Noha Gad

Every product starts as an idea, but turning that idea into a profitable, sustainable offering requires far more than good design or effective marketing. Companies must coordinate research and development (R&D), manufacturing, supply chains, quality control, sales, customer support, and eventual retirement, often across multiple teams, markets, and systems. When this coordination breaks down, it can lead to delayed launches, inconsistent product information, rising costs, compliance risks, and lost customer trust.

This is where Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) becomes essential. PLM is a strategic business approach that manages a product throughout its entire life, from the initial concept and design stages through production, launch, growth, service, and end-of-life. Rather than treating each stage as a separate task handled by a different department, PLM creates a connected framework for managing product data, processes, decisions, and collaboration across the organization.

This approach is not important only for large manufacturers; it is also pivotal to consumer brands, technology companies, industrial firms, and even digital-first businesses that heavily rely on lifecycle management to bring products to market faster, maintain quality, control costs, and respond to changing customer expectations. 

Why does product lifecycle management matter?

At the core of PLM is the end-to-end integration of product data, processes, and systems along the entire value chain. Implementing PLM consistently can shorten decision paths, reduce errors cost, and bring innovations to market faster and more reliably. Increasing product complexity, shorter innovation cycles, and globally distributed value chains make structured PLM a decisive competitive factor that allows companies to manage product processes across departmental and site boundaries, while meeting regulatory, environmental, and economic requirements.

An integrated PLM approach creates the necessary transparency: development, production, quality assurance, sales, and aftersales all work from a shared data foundation. Therefore, decisions become faster, better informed, and more traceable. Also, a consistent, quality-assured product data landscape is a prerequisite for modern technologies such as AI, machine learning, and automation to deliver their full potential.

PLM approach also helps organizations keep up with the evolving complexity and engineering challenges of developing new products. It is one of the four cornerstones of a manufacturing corporation's information technology structure, alongside customer relationship management (CRM), supply chain management (SCM), and enterprise resource planning (ERP). 

For marketing, determining a product’s lifecycle stage guides the team’s strategy. For instance, a new product in the introduction stage needs to be explained, while a mature product needs to be differentiated.

Stages of PLM

PLM follows a structured sequence of phases that guide a product from its earliest idea to its eventual withdrawal from the market. Most PLM frameworks include the following core stages: 

• Concept stage. The concept stage involves initial ideas and planning for a new product, and includes market research, identifying customer needs, and determining the feasibility of the product. Often led by the R&D department, this stage kicks off the product lifecycle, as it is where the ideas are generated.
• Design stage. In this stage, the product is planned, developed, and tested. It involves creating product prototypes, refining the design, and ensuring that it meets all regulatory and safety requirements. 
• Production stage. This stage starts when the company feels confident in the new product and feels there is a market for it. This stage involves manufacturing the product, including sourcing raw materials, assembling components, and testing the final product. At this point, the company should have a fully completed product and should not be continually tweaking the design.
• Sales stage. After the product is made, it moves to the sales stage that involves promoting and selling the product to customers. This includes advertising, sales promotions, and pricing strategies. In many cases, the sales stage and production stage occur concurrently, as a company must try to forecast how many sales will occur.
• Support stage. The support stage involves providing ongoing support to customers after they have purchased the product. This includes customer service, warranties, and repairs. It may also include ongoing training or services provided to new owners to enhance user experience.
• Retirement Stage. Whether competitors have delivered a better product or the product is simply no longer demanded by the market, the product lifecycle ends with the retirement stage. This stage involves the end-of-life of the product, including disposal, recycling, or repurposing of the product.

Finally, product lifecycle management plays a pivotal role in providing companies with a structured approach to manage products from initial idea through design, production, sales, customer support, and retirement. By connecting teams, standardizing product data, and improving collaboration across the value chain, PLM helps businesses launch products faster, reduce errors and costs, maintain quality, and respond more effectively to market changes.

Ghada Ismail

When a company decides to enter a new market or expand its operations, one of the first questions it faces is whether to build from scratch or invest in an existing business or facility. This decision often comes down to two approaches: greenfield investment and brownfield investment.

Both strategies can help companies expand their presence, reach new customers, and increase their market share. However, they differ in how businesses establish operations, how much control they retain, and the costs and risks they take on.

Understanding these differences can help investors choose the approach that best fits their growth plans.

What Is Greenfield Investment?

Greenfield investment occurs when a company establishes a new operation from the ground up in a foreign or domestic market. Instead of purchasing an existing facility or business, the investor develops the project from scratch, which may include acquiring land, constructing buildings, installing equipment, and hiring employees.

One of the main advantages of this approach is control. Investors can design facilities, choose technologies, establish company culture, and structure operations according to their specific requirements.

Greenfield projects can also introduce new technology, create jobs, and support the development of local industries.

However, starting from scratch can be expensive and time-consuming. Investors may need to navigate licensing requirements, secure land, build infrastructure, and establish relationships with suppliers and customers before generating revenue. These challenges can become more significant when entering an unfamiliar market.

What Is Brownfield Investment?

Brownfield investment involves investing in an existing facility, business, or industrial site to expand operations or develop new activities. Depending on the project, investors may renovate an existing property, upgrade production equipment, acquire an operating company, or repurpose an underused industrial site.

This approach can offer a faster route into a market because essential infrastructure may already be available. Existing facilities may have access to utilities, transport networks, suppliers, and an established workforce.

Acquiring an operating business can also provide an existing customer base and established market relationships.

Nevertheless, brownfield investments come with their own challenges. Older facilities may require costly upgrades, while existing businesses can have operational inefficiencies or outdated technology. Investors may also face difficulties integrating employees, systems, and corporate cultures after an acquisition.

Greenfield vs. Brownfield Investment: Key Differences

The main difference lies in how the investment is established.

Initial costs: Greenfield projects typically require substantial upfront spending on land, construction, equipment, and staffing. Brownfield investments may reduce infrastructure costs, although acquisition prices and renovation expenses can be significant.

Time to market: Greenfield investments usually take longer because operations must be developed from the beginning. Brownfield projects can begin operating sooner when the existing infrastructure is suitable.

Control and flexibility: Greenfield investors have greater freedom to design operations and introduce new systems. Brownfield investors may need to adapt existing facilities, processes, or organizational structures.

Risk profile: Greenfield investments carry construction, permitting, and market-entry risks. Brownfield investments involve risks related to existing assets, legacy systems, environmental conditions, and potential hidden liabilities.

Local presence: Greenfield investors build their workforce and business relationships over time. Brownfield investors may benefit from established employees, suppliers, and customers.

Neither strategy is automatically cheaper or safer. The outcome depends on the market, the condition of available assets, and the investor's objectives.

Which Investment Strategy Should Companies Choose?

The right choice depends on what a company wants to achieve.

Greenfield investment may be more suitable for businesses that need specialized facilities, advanced technology, or complete control over their operations. It can also make sense when suitable existing assets are unavailable.

Brownfield investment may appeal to companies seeking faster market entry, existing infrastructure, or an established customer base. It can be particularly attractive when a business can improve an underperforming operation or modernize an outdated facility.

To Wrap Things Up…

Greenfield and brownfield investments offer different routes to business expansion. Greenfield projects provide greater flexibility and control but generally require more time and upfront investment. Brownfield projects can accelerate market entry by building on existing assets, although they may involve costly upgrades and inherited risks.

Ultimately, investors should evaluate total costs, expected returns, operational requirements, and market conditions before committing to either approach. The goal is not simply to build something new or acquire something existing, but to choose the investment structure that offers the strongest long-term value.

Ghada Ismail

When a company wants to grow, buying another business can sometimes be easier than building something from scratch. Instead of spending years developing a new product, entering a new market, or hiring a specialized team, a company can acquire a smaller business that already has what it needs.

This is the idea behind a bolt-on acquisition.

A bolt-on acquisition is when an established company buys a smaller business and adds it to its existing operations. The acquired company usually brings something specific to the table, such as new technology, customers, talent, products, or access to a particular market.

The focus is not necessarily on changing the entire business. It is about adding another useful piece to what is already there.

How does a bolt-on acquisition work?

It usually starts with a company identifying an area where it wants to grow.

Take a software company that has a large customer base but does not offer cybersecurity services. Rather than spending years developing those services internally, it could acquire a smaller cybersecurity company that already has the technology, employees, and customers.

The buyer can then add those capabilities to its existing business.

The acquired company may keep its own name and management team, or it may be fully integrated into the larger company. That depends on the businesses involved and what the buyer believes will work best.

What matters is that the acquisition fills a specific gap or creates an opportunity for further growth.

Why do companies choose bolt-on acquisitions?

Speed is one of the biggest reasons. Building a new product or entering a new market takes time. Companies need to hire people, develop products, find customers, and build relationships. Buying an established business can shorten that process considerably.

Bolt-ons can also give companies access to new markets. A business looking to expand into another country, for example, could acquire a local company that already understands the market and has an established customer base.

Technology and talent are another major attraction. In areas such as artificial intelligence, fintech, and software, smaller companies often develop highly specialized products or expertise that larger businesses may want to bring in quickly.

There can also be financial benefits. Once the businesses are combined, the buyer may be able to share infrastructure, eliminate overlapping costs, and introduce the acquired company's products to a much larger customer base.

How is it different from a major acquisition?

Not every acquisition is a bolt-on.

A large or transformational acquisition can significantly change the direction of a company. It could involve buying a major competitor, entering a completely new industry, or acquiring a business that becomes a central part of the company's future.

A bolt-on is usually more focused.

The buyer already has an established business and is looking for smaller companies that can strengthen it in specific areas. In simple terms, it is less about rebuilding the business and more about adding to it.

That can make bolt-ons easier to manage than very large deals, although integration still requires careful planning.

What is the challenging part here?

Smaller acquisitions are not automatically easy acquisitions.

One of the biggest challenges is making the two businesses work together. Different company cultures, technology systems, and ways of working can create problems if they are not handled properly.

There is also the question of price. A company may look like a perfect fit, but if the buyer pays too much, the deal may not generate the expected returns.

Then there are the promised synergies. Buyers often expect an acquisition to increase sales or reduce costs, but those benefits do not happen automatically. They need to be planned and executed.

To Wrap Things Up…

For companies with ambitious growth plans, bolt-on acquisitions can offer a practical way to expand without making one huge bet. Instead of spending a large amount on a single transformational deal, a company can make several smaller acquisitions over time. Each one can add something different, whether that is technology, customers, talent or geographic reach.

This approach is particularly common among private equity-backed companies. An investor may acquire a larger “platform” business and then use a series of bolt-on acquisitions to expand it.

Ultimately, a successful bolt-on acquisition comes down to one simple question: Does the smaller company add something the buyer genuinely needs?

If the answer is yes, and the two businesses can work well together, a bolt-on can be a relatively straightforward way to accelerate growth without starting from zero.

Noha Gad

Offering a strong salary is no longer enough to attract and retain top talent in today’s competitive job market, as employees increasingly look beyond base pay to evaluate the full value of a job offer, and that is where fringe benefits come in.

Fringe benefits are forms of non-wage compensation provided to employees in addition to their regular salary, including cash equivalents, property, services, or other privileges, such as health insurance, retirement contributions, company cars, tuition assistance, or paid time off.

Although they are viewed as extras, fringe benefits play a pivotal role in modern compensation packages for both employers and employees. For employers, they serve as powerful tools to enhance employer branding, boost employee morale and productivity, and gain tax advantages when structured correctly. For employees, they can significantly increase the real value of their compensation while improving financial security, health, and work-life balance.

What are fringe benefits?

Fringe benefits are additional remuneration that employees receive from their employers. They are designed to enhance the overall employee experience and provide added value beyond monetary compensation, serving as incentives that attract top talent and boost employee morale and satisfaction. By offering these extras, companies aim to create a positive work environment where employees feel valued and motivated.

Fringe benefits encompass a wide range of non-wage compensation that add another layer of appeal to any employment package, while creating a supportive workplace culture where employees feel appreciated for their hard work and dedication without only relying on financial remuneration.

Examples of fringe benefits

There are various types of fringe benefits that companies can offer to their employees, including:

• Health insurance: Many employers offer comprehensive health insurance plans, covering medical, dental, and vision expenses for employees and their dependents.
• Retirement plans: Companies may contribute to retirement savings accounts or offer pension schemes to ensure financial security for employees after they retire.
• Paid time off: In addition to statutory holidays, companies often provide vacation leave, sick leave, personal days off, or paid parental leave to support employee well-being and family needs.
• Employee Assistance Programs (EAP): These programs offer confidential counseling services for employees dealing with personal issues such as stress management or substance abuse problems.
• Education reimbursement: Some organizations support continuous learning through tuition reimbursement programs or scholarships for further education or professional development courses.
• Wellness programs: These initiatives promote employee health through gym membership discounts, wellness challenges, on-site fitness classes, or access to mental health resources.

Why do companies offer fringe benefits?

Offering fringe benefits gives companies a competitive edge in the job market, helping them to attract and retain top talent. Some advantages of providing fringe benefits include:

• Increasing employee satisfaction. These benefits make employees feel valued and appreciated, leading to higher job satisfaction and making them more likely to be loyal and committed to their work.
• Improving morale and motivation. Through fringe benefits, employers show they prioritize employees’ well-being, thereby boosting their morale and motivation.
• Attracting top talent: A comprehensive package that includes attractive fringe benefits can be a major draw for highly skilled professionals.
• Enhancing productivity: Offering fringe benefits helps create a positive work environment where individuals are motivated to excel. 
• Reducing turnover: Investing in fringe benefits can help reduce employee turnover rates as individuals are less likely to leave an organization that provides valuable perks beyond salary alone.
• Saving costs for employees: Some fringe benefits, like health insurance or retirement plans, may come with cost savings for employees compared to purchasing these services individually.

To sum up, fringe benefits have evolved from optional extras into a core component of strategic compensation, enabling employers to differentiate their offers, strengthen retention, and build a culture where employees feel genuinely supported.

These non-wage benefits can materially raise the real value of employees’ compensation while improving health, financial security, and work-life balance. For employers, a well-designed mix, aligned to workforce needs and local tax rules, can drive morale, productivity, and long-term cost efficiency.

Fringe benefits become a genuine investment in employees and a real advantage when it comes to winning and keeping great talent. For employers, all what they need to do is to choose benefits that truly fit their team and their goals, understand the full cost and tax picture, explain them in plain language, and revisit them often to see how they stack up.

Ghada Ismail

In this second part, Abu Zannad turns to the resource startups actually have plenty of: creativity. He explains why “out-noticing” the competition matters more than out-spending them, and why so many founders confuse visibility, reputation, and meaning when they talk about “building a brand.”

How can startups use creativity as a competitive advantage when they cannot compete with larger companies on advertising budgets, resources, or brand recognition?

I think we first need to stop treating creativity as incidental, as this magical thing that occasionally happens when a talented person walks into a room. Creativity is becoming a much more important competitive capability precisely because AI is making so many other capabilities abundant.

Today, almost everyone can produce more content, more variations, more designs, more headlines and more analysis, faster and cheaper than ever before. So producing more is becoming less interesting. The competitive advantage increasingly lies in seeing something other people did not see.

I often describe it as the difference between information and insight. Two companies can have access to exactly the same data and come to completely different conclusions. Same data. Different eyes. That difference is human judgement.

And I don’t think insight has to be left to luck. There are conditions that make it more likely. Experience gives you patterns. Curiosity makes you notice what does not fit. Scepticism stops you accepting the first explanation. Contradictions reveal where reality is behaving differently from the category’s assumptions. Connections allow two things that normally live separately to collide.

Sometimes even constraint helps. I call that creative desperation: when you genuinely cannot solve the problem in the conventional way, you are forced to find another path. That is why startups may actually have an advantage. A large incumbent can often buy another media plan. A startup cannot. It has to notice something the incumbent has stopped noticing.

Look at the extraordinary group of younger businesses emerging around us:

Dollar Shave Club did not beat the shaving establishment by producing a more expensive shaving commercial. It understood internet humour and attacked the seriousness of the category.

Liquid Death looked at bottled water and asked why water had to behave like bottled water at all. It borrowed from punk, heavy metal and entertainment culture.

PRIME understood that creator communities themselves could become an extraordinary distribution system.

Crumbl turned cookies into something closer to sneaker drops; weekly anticipation, scarcity, reviewing and participation.

Sleep or Die looked at the soft, calming visual language of the sleep category and contradicted it completely.

And Dubai Chocolate may be one of the most fascinating cases of all. Someone created an unusually sensory product: “the crack of the chocolate, the colour of the pistachio, the texture of knafeh and a platform discovered that people could not stop watching it”. The algorithm accelerated the phenomenon; it did not originate the human fascination.

I think we should stop treating cases like these as amusing stories about things that “went viral.” They are evidence. We are watching something close to a new applied science of cultural creativity develop in front of us.

Every platform is producing an enormous live laboratory of human behaviour. Every unexpected breakout gives us something to study. What was the human tension? What cultural code did the brand recognize? What category convention did it violate? What community carried the idea? What made somebody want to participate rather than merely watch? What behaviour did the platform reward? What made the idea travel from one subculture into another?

Those are not questions only for advertising people anymore. They are questions for founders, anthropologists, behavioural scientists, strategists and technologists. And over time, we can begin building frameworks around them; not formulas for producing virality, because culture will never be that obedient, but better places to look for the unexpected.

That distinction matters. Creativity is not a formula. But neither is it magic. We can study it. We can develop our intuition. We can accumulate cases. We can recognize patterns. We can learn the grammar of a platform, a category, a culture or a subculture; and then have the courage to break that grammar when the human insight tells us to.

This, to me, is where AI becomes enormously useful. Let the machine search wider. Let it retrieve more cases, make more connections, generate more possibilities and accelerate experimentation.

But the human still has to ask: Which one matters? Which contradiction is interesting? Which observation is merely strange… and which one reveals something genuinely human? Which idea deserves to exist?

Because AI can increasingly generate ten thousand possibilities. The scarce capability is knowing which possibility is worth pursuing.

So my advice to startups would be: don’t try to out-produce the large companies. You probably can’t. And increasingly, there is little advantage in doing so anyway. Out-notice them. Out-understand them. And then use creativity to turn what you noticed into something the culture cannot ignore.

What do you think startups misunderstand most about building a brand: is it about visibility, reputation, or creating an identity people want to associate with?

I think what startups misunderstand most is the word brand itself.

They often think the sequence is: Build the product. Acquire customers. Grow. And when we become big enough, we will “do the brand.” Usually that means a new logo, a brand book, perhaps a large campaign.

But the uncomfortable truth is that you are building the brand from the first day whether you intend to or not. The first product experience builds it. The first customer complaint builds it. The way your founder speaks builds it. The price builds it. The packaging builds it. The people who choose you build it. The things you repeatedly say, and the things you repeatedly do, build it. So visibility, reputation and identity are not really three competing answers. They are three different layers.

Visibility means: I know you exist.

You can buy visibility. You can hack it. You can go viral and acquire enormous visibility almost overnight. But visibility is not a brand. We are surrounded today by things that became very visible and disappeared six months later.

Reputation means: I have learned what to expect from you.

You deliver. The product works. You keep your promises. There is consistency between what you say and what actually happens. Reputation takes longer because it has to survive contact with reality. And then there is something more interesting.

Meaning.

At some point, the strongest brands begin to signify something beyond the immediate utility of the product. Choosing the brand says something. Sometimes it says something to other people. Sometimes, more importantly, it says something to ourselves.

That is very close to the argument I make in AdEntity. Modern advertising became powerful because it taught objects to carry meaning. A watch stopped being only an instrument for telling time. A car was not only transportation. A pair of shoes was not only protection for the feet. Commercial objects became signals through which ambition, taste, rebellion, belonging, care or achievement could become socially legible.

And AdEntity does not argue that brands invented those desires. It argues that the surrounding system; the brand, product, image, celebrity and media environment… helped teach people how those desires could be recognized.

That is why I would hesitate to tell a founder, “Create an identity people want to associate with.” It is almost right. But it can lead to another mistake: inventing a beautiful brand personality with no relationship to the actual business.

Meaning has to be earned through product truth.

If Liquid Death behaved like a rebellious entertainment brand but the product, packaging and every interaction reverted to conventional bottled-water behaviour, the mythology would eventually collapse.

If Apple talks about creativity but produces experiences that feel careless, the symbolism weakens.

A brand cannot indefinitely advertise a meaning that the business itself does not substantiate. And this is where I think startups face a particularly modern trap. Startups live inside dashboards: ‘CAC. ROAS. Conversion. Cost per click. Retention. Downloads. Funnels’.

These numbers matter enormously. I would never advise a founder to ignore them. But because they are visible every morning on a dashboard, they begin to acquire psychological authority. What we can measure immediately starts to look more important than what is accumulating slowly.

And brand accumulates slowly. Memory accumulates. Familiarity accumulates. Trust accumulates. Distinctive assets accumulate. Meaning accumulates. This is why performance marketing is so seductive. You spend today and something happens tomorrow.

Brand building is more like compound interest. For a while, it can look as though very little is happening. And then one day people search for your name instead of the category. They recommend you without being paid. They recognize you before they see the logo. They forgive you a small mistake because there is accumulated trust. They consider you before the performance ad arrives. They may even pay slightly more because the alternative does not feel equivalent.

That is an economic asset, not a communications indulgence.

Airbnb gave us a fascinating demonstration of this. When the company dramatically reduced marketing during the pandemic, traffic recovered to roughly 95% of its 2019 level before marketing expenditure fully resumed. By the fourth quarter of 2020, more than 90% of traffic was direct or unpaid. Brian Chesky’s conclusion was essentially that Airbnb had become culturally established enough that the brand itself was generating demand.

That is what founders should aspire to. Not necessarily becoming a verb. But getting to the point where every customer does not have to be rented again from an advertising platform. Because if every sale requires another paid impression, another promotion and another retargeting message, you may have built an efficient acquisition machine. You have not necessarily built a brand.

There is another problem that optimization culture creates for startups: they change too much. New headline. New proposition. New design. New tone. New campaign. New audience. New creative every week because something performed 4% better. Experimentation is essential for discovering what works. But once you discover something valuable, brand building requires the opposite capability: the discipline to repeat it.

Memory needs consistency. And let’s not confuse consistency with repetition.

The Ehrenberg-Bass work on distinctive assets is useful here. Colours, sounds, shapes, characters, packaging and other recognizable cues only become assets when people repeatedly learn to associate them with one brand. They are built and protected over time; they do not become distinctive because somebody declared them distinctive in a brand guideline.

So perhaps I would give founders a very simple architecture: Be visible enough to enter the mind. Be good enough to earn a reputation. Be consistent enough to become remembered. Be meaningful enough to stand for something.

And make sure the product continuously earns the story you are telling.

Because a brand, in the end, is not the campaign. It is not the logo. It is not the number of followers. It is not even what the founder says the company stands for. A brand is the memory and meaning that remain when the advertising disappears. That is what startups should start building from day one.

Noha Gad

Companies increasingly turn to cost-control measures to safeguard their financial stability. Among the most common and visible of these measures is the hiring freeze. While often presented as a temporary, strategic pause, a hiring freeze carries significant implications for employees, job seekers, and the organization’s long-term growth trajectory.

A hiring freeze is a business decision that sounds simple on paper but ripples through every corner of an organization. At its core, it is a temporary pause on bringing new people on board, no new roles, no backfills for departing employees, and often a hard stop on most recruitment activity. Companies often take this decision when they need to tighten budgets, navigate economic uncertainty, or reevaluate their workforce strategy without resorting to layoffs.

For current employees, a hiring freeze can feel like a mixed signal: there is short-term reassurance that jobs are safe, but also the creeping reality of heavier workloads, stalled promotions, and growing anxiety about the company’s future. For job seekers, it can mean suddenly stalled offers or roles that vanish midway through the interview process. And for leadership, it’s a balancing act between preserving cash and protecting morale, productivity, and long-term talent pipelines.

Why do companies implement a hiring freeze? 

Leaders may implement a hiring freeze to protect company finances and keep the business operational. They may also freeze new hires if the organization is plateauing or declining. There are a few other reasons why a halt in hiring may be necessary:

• Budget deficit: If the process of hiring and paying new employees has the potential to cause overspending, leaders may halt recruitment. They may decide to delay hiring candidates until they improve the business's financial situation. 
• Emerging liquidity issues: Liquid assets are a type of capital businesses have, such as cash balances and bank deposits. If an employer is uncertain whether a company is maintaining enough liquid assets, it might stop hiring efforts.
• Upcoming layoffs: Layoffs are the discharge of temporary or permanent employees due to a lack of work or money available. Company leaders may implement a hiring freeze to save funds, preserve the fiscal stability of the business, and avoid layoffs.
• Changes in market conditions: The shifts in market conditions can have a notable impact on revenue generation and overall profitability. Thus, leaders may implement a hiring freeze to counter the impacts of these changing conditions.

A hiring freeze may have an impact on current employees, as they might be responsible for completing additional tasks and working longer hours to keep a business operational. Professionals can overcome the challenge of a hiring freeze by:

• Strengthening professional relationships with peers to position themselves as a valuable team member.
• Seeking leadership opportunities, as a hiring freeze may leave certain positions open, including leadership positions.
• Maintaining a positive mindset and attitude to be able to develop a positive reputation among colleagues and supervisors.  

Pros and cons

Although the hiring freeze delivers immediate financial relief, it sets off a chain of operational and cultural side effects that can last well beyond the freeze itself. Potential benefits include:

• Immediate cost control: Halting new hires quickly reduces cash outflow without the legal, financial, and reputational costs of layoffs.
• Preserving institutional knowledge: Because existing employees keep their jobs, a freeze avoids severance costs and the loss of expertise that come with mass redundancies.
• Signaling fiscal discipline to investors and lenders: A freeze can be read as a proactive, responsible move to protect the balance sheet and extend runway.
• Flexibility and reversibility: Unlike layoffs, a hiring freeze can be lifted relatively quickly when conditions improve, allowing the company to resume growth without rebuilding from scratch.

Key risks and downside include:

• Increased workload and burnout: Vacant roles and natural attrition mean remaining staff absorb extra responsibilities, which can reduce performance, quality, and customer service over time.
• Retention risks: Employees may interpret a freeze as a warning sign of deeper trouble, leading to disengagement or voluntary turnover.
• Talent pipeline damage: Prolonged freezes can harm the employer brand, making it harder to attract top candidates later and causing promising prospects to drop out of the funnel.
• Management challenges: Leaders may avoid addressing poor performance because removing an underperformer would leave a gap that can’t be filled, quietly lowering team standards.

To sum up, a hiring freeze can be a necessary, short-term response to financial pressure, but it is not a cost-free solution. While it buys time and preserves jobs in the near term, the hidden costs accumulate in heavier workloads, strained morale, stalled growth, and a weakened talent pipeline.

Ghada Ismail

Ahmad Abu Zannad is an advertising strategist and author of AdEntity, a new book arguing that advertising did more than sell products over the past century; it helped build modern identity itself, turning ancient human signals like status, belonging, and ambition into a shared language understood across cultures. The book’s central warning is that this role is now shifting to algorithms, which Abu Zannad argues are moving beyond shaping what we buy to shaping who we become.

In the first installment of Sharikat Mubasher’s interview with Abu Zannad, we explore the deeper forces shaping brand-building today: how culture actually works (and how startups misread it), what has really changed as advertising has moved from the TV era to the age of AI, and why an obsession with algorithms and data can quietly replace understanding people with merely measuring them.

Your book looks at how advertising became deeply connected to culture and technology. How can startups use culture to build brands that people genuinely connect with?

“I would start by changing one word in the question. I don’t think startups should use culture. I think they should understand it.

Culture is not putting a local celebrity in an advertisement, borrowing a dialect, or adding familiar symbols to a campaign. Those are expressions of culture. Culture itself is much deeper. It is the shared understanding of what success looks like, what generosity means, what makes somebody trustworthy, what feels prestigious, what feels embarrassing, what belongs and what does not.

And beneath culture sit very old human motivations.

People everywhere want belonging, recognition, security, status, love and hope. But cultures give those motivations different expressions. Ambition in Riyadh does not necessarily look exactly like ambition in London or Tokyo. The human motivation may travel; its cultural meaning changes.

And when I say culture, I don’t only mean national culture. Internet culture, youth culture, creator culture and subcultures are cultures too.

Look at Dollar Shave Club. They entered shaving against companies with enormous budgets and decades of category authority. They couldn’t outspend Gillette, so they understood something happening culturally: people were increasingly suspicious of over-engineered products, corporate language and inflated prices. Their famous low-budget 2012 launch film spoke in the irreverent language of internet culture and generated 12,000 new subscribers immediately after launch.

Or look at Liquid Death. They entered perhaps the ultimate commodity, water, and behaved nothing like a water brand. They borrowed the visual codes, humour and attitude of punk, heavy metal and energy-drink culture: tall cans, a skull, “Murder Your Thirst,” absurd entertainment. The founder has explicitly described the ambition as building an entertainment company that monetizes through beverages.

PRIME did something different again. Logan Paul and KSI entered one of the world’s most competitive beverage categories with something Coca-Cola and Pepsi could not simply manufacture overnight: an existing cultural relationship with millions of people. The product launched in 2022 out of creator culture, turning two former rivals into partners and their audiences into an extraordinary distribution network for attention.

None of these companies began with the advantages traditionally needed to enter such categories. What they possessed was cultural capital before they possessed category power.

That is where I think startups have an interesting advantage over very large companies. They may have less money, but they are often much closer to the tension they are trying to solve. The founder may have lived the frustration, spoken the language of the community and understood a behaviour long before somebody turned it into a market-research chart.

So I would tell a startup: don’t begin by asking, “How do we make our brand culturally relevant?”

Ask: What is already alive in culture that nobody in our category is seeing… and what legitimate role can our product play inside it?

Because if you cannot outspend the category, you may still be able to out-understand it culturally.

The best brands do not impose themselves on culture. They find something already alive within it… and become useful enough, meaningful enough and distinctive enough to belong there.”

From the traditional advertising era to today’s AI-driven landscape, what has changed most about how brands earn consumers’ attention, and what has remained the same?

“I think the biggest change is that we have moved from an age of persuasion to an age increasingly shaped by selection.

In the traditional advertising era, a brand would buy access to an audience through television, newspapers, magazines or outdoor, and then the creative idea had to do the difficult part: make people notice, remember, feel something and perhaps change their behaviour.

There was still a human author in the middle of that process. A strategist, a writer, a creative director, a filmmaker. Someone was making a judgement about people and culture and saying: I think this idea will matter.

Today, the system is very different.

The algorithm increasingly decides what reaches you, how often you see it, what disappears, what gets amplified and what comes next. And AI is accelerating this dramatically. We can now create hundreds or thousands of variations, personalize them, test them in real time and optimize continuously around whatever generates a measurable response.

So the machinery of attention has changed enormously.

But the strange thing is that the human being underneath it has changed very little.

We still want many of the things our grandparents wanted: belonging, recognition, status, love, security, hope, companionship, achievement. This is one of the central arguments in AdEntity. Advertising did not invent these desires. At its best, it understood them, translated them through culture and gave them contemporary symbols, products and stories.

A diamond could become a signal of commitment. A car could become a signal of achievement or freedom. A sports brand could turn effort into a story of personal transcendence.

The technology changed. The human motives did not.

And I think that distinction matters enormously now because AI creates a temptation to confuse response with meaning.

An algorithm can learn that outrage keeps me watching. It can learn which image makes me click, which headline makes me pause and which version converts 3% better. But a reaction is not necessarily a relationship. And attention is not necessarily admiration.

This is where I worry about the direction of advertising. We are becoming extraordinarily good at optimizing the signal while sometimes forgetting to ask whether the signal means anything.

The old advertising industry could certainly produce terrible work, but its greatest work tried to create something people would voluntarily carry into culture: a line, a story, an aspiration, a piece of music, an image, sometimes even a new way of seeing themselves.

The danger today is that we settle for something much smaller simply because we can measure it more precisely. So if I had to put the whole transition in one sentence:

The old challenge was, “How do I persuade you?” The new power is increasingly, “What will the system keep showing you?”

That is an extraordinary technological shift. But brands should remember that behind every data point is still a very old human animal trying to belong, aspire, love, achieve and make sense of the world. The screen keeps changing. The human being behind the screen changes far more slowly.”

Has advertising become too obsessed with algorithms and data at the expense of understanding people? What can startups learn from that?

“Yes, but I would be careful with the criticism because I am not against data, algorithms or AI. Quite the opposite. I think they are extraordinary tools.

The problem begins when we confuse efficiency with intelligence.

Years ago, in Adman vs. Chomsky, I challenged Noam Chomsky’s description of advertising as an industry whose prime task is to ensure that “uninformed consumers make irrational choices.” I still disagree with that as a definition of advertising. Human beings were irrational long before the first advertising agency existed. Behavioural economics has simply helped us understand some of the shortcuts through which people navigate a complicated world.

But there is a danger today that we take those cognitive biases; scarcity, social proof, loss aversion, immediacy, outrage, fear of missing out… and hand them to an algorithm whose only instruction is: find what produces a response and do more of it.

Then AI allows us to generate another hundred versions, test them faster, target them more precisely and optimize them continuously.

We should ask ourselves: is that progress?

Or have we simply become better at doing mediocre advertising faster, cheaper and more intrusively?

That, to me, is the misuse of the algorithm. Because there is another possibility.

Look at Sleep or Die, a young sleep brand that looked at an entire category filled with lavender colours, peaceful bedrooms and soft wellness language and basically said: this is not what insomnia feels like. The brand called exhausted customers “zombies,” used provocative cigarette-style packaging and built an entire irreverent world around the seriousness of sleep. One unconventional product post on LinkedIn reportedly reached more than 180,000 people, and around 4,000 people joined the waitlist before launch.

The algorithm did not come up with that idea. It discovered that people found the idea interesting.

And Dubai gave us an even more extraordinary example.

FIX Dessert Chocolatier did not begin with a dashboard saying, “Pistachio content has a high completion rate.” Sarah Hamouda began with a craving and created something genuinely different: chocolate, pistachio, tahini, and the crunch of knafeh. Then a creator filmed herself breaking the bar open. You could see the green filling, hear the crack and crunch, and almost experience the texture through the screen.

That video eventually exceeded 120 million views, and FIX reportedly received more than 30,000 orders after it took off. The phenomenon became so large that “Dubai chocolate” became a global food category, copied by some of the world’s biggest confectionery companies.

Again, the algorithm did not invent Dubai Chocolate. It recognized that human beings could not stop looking at it.

Crumbl is another useful example. Its weekly rotating cookie drops created anticipation and FOMO before TikTok amplified them; on the platform, its campaign reached 22 million people and grew followers by 1,500% in two months. The interesting part is that the platform was amplifying an existing behavioral idea, the weekly drop, not substituting for one.

And that is what I think startups should learn. Don’t ask AI to compensate for the absence of an idea. Don’t use behavioral science merely to locate the next vulnerability you can press.

Understand people first. Create something distinctive enough to deserve attention. Then let the algorithm do what it is exceptionally good at: find the people for whom that idea resonates and help it travel.

The algorithm should be an amplifier, not the strategist. And perhaps that is the simplest way I can put it: AI should help great ideas travel faster. It should not merely help mediocre ideas become cheaper.”

Noha Gad

Saudi Arabia is ramping up investment in artificial intelligence (AI) and digital infrastructure, led by the Public Investment Fund (PIF), as the Kingdom seeks to attract technology capital and build domestic AI capabilities. Driven by Saudi Vision 2030, technology in the Kingdom has evolved from an operational tool into an innovative national industry, establishing a competitive digital ecosystem that attracts significant domestic and international capital.

Marking 2026 as the Year of Artificial Intelligence underscores the Kingdom’s commitment, following achievements by 2025 in which Saudi Arabia ranked first globally in digital governance and cybersecurity indicators, and third in AI models. 

Voice AI is emerging as one of Saudi Arabia’s most visible and practical AI applications, moving from pilots in 2024–2025 to scaled deployments across government, banking, healthcare, and customer experience in 2026.

A report released by Markets and Markets anticipated the Saudi AI voice market to grow with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 32.3% to reach $149.05 million in 2030. This growth was mainly driven by growing demand for secure authentication methods across vital sectors.

Key cities such as Riyadh, Jeddah, and Dammam dominate the market thanks to their status as major economic and technological hubs. The concentration of financial institutions, telecom companies, and government agencies in these cities fosters a conducive environment for the growth of AI voice biometrics solutions.

The Saudi voice AI market is segmented into various types, notably speaker verification, speaker identification, voice authentication, voice analysis, and others. Each sub-segment plays a crucial role in addressing specific needs within the voice biometrics landscape.

Speaker Verification

This sub-segment currently dominates the market because of its widespread application in secure access control systems, particularly in banking and financial services. Organizations are increasingly adopting this technology to authenticate users based on their unique voice patterns, which enhances security while providing a seamless user experience. The growing trend of remote banking and digital services has also accelerated the demand for speaker verification solutions, making it a preferred choice among enterprises.

Speaker Identification

This technology is used to determine which known person from an enrolled pool is speaking, without the user first stating their identity. Most enterprises and contact centers in Saudi Arabia use this technology to automatically tag callers or meeting participants with their profiles in CRM or HR systems, thereby streamlining routing and supporting fraud‑detection workflows by matching suspicious voices against databases of known bad actors.

Voice Authentication

This term refers to the practical use of voice biometrics as the authentication mechanism, effectively turning a person’s voice into a “password” for accessing accounts, applications, or services. It serves as a key enabler of digital transformation in Saudi financial services and public‑sector channels, allowing banks, fintechs, and government agencies to replace cumbersome security questions with seamless voice‑based login and transaction approval.

Voice analysis 

This biometric encompasses a broader set of techniques that extract insights from speech without necessarily identifying the speaker. This allows Saudi banks, telecommunication companies, and government to use voice analysis to monitor customer satisfaction, flag potentially fraudulent or high‑risk interactions, optimize agent scripts, and improve overall service quality.

Arabic voice AI across vital sectors

Arabic Voice AI in Saudi Arabia is moving from isolated pilots to core infrastructure across government, financial services, healthcare, and customer‑facing industries, driven by Vision 2030. What ties these efforts together is more than just Arabic support; it is the use of smart, bilingual agents that can understand local dialects, operate on sovereign or in‑Kingdom infrastructure, meet Personal Data Protection Law (PDPL) and sectoral compliance rules, and integrate with existing CRM, core banking, and e‑government systems.

In government and public services, Arabic voice AI appears in hotlines, ministry contact centers, and digital‑government channels, handling FAQs, appointment booking, status checks, and basic transactions in Saudi dialects.

Also, financial institutions are among the most advanced users of Arabic Voice AI, deploying bilingual voice agents for onboarding, account servicing, payment reminders, collections, and handling complaints in line with consumer‑protection and conduct rules. Typical use cases include instant balance and mini‑statement queries, card blocking/unblocking, instalment and due‑date reminders, cheque‑book or PIN requests, and automated follow‑ups on failed payments, all delivered in natural Saudi dialect rather than translated scripts. 

In the healthcare sector, Arabic voice AI is adopted by several hospitals, clinic groups, labs, and telehealth platforms across the Kingdom for non‑clinical workflows, including appointment scheduling, rescheduling, reminders, insurance verification, and patient communication via phone and WhatsApp. Some providers are piloting clinical documentation tools, such as AI scribes, that listen to doctor–patient conversations and auto‑generate notes in Arabic, reducing administrative burden while keeping diagnosis and treatment decisions with clinicians. 

Beyond regulated sectors, Arabic voice AI is being embedded in retail, e‑commerce, real estate, and hospitality to automate high‑volume inbound and outbound calls in natural Arabic. Use cases include outbound payment reminders for BNPL and credit products, insurance renewal calls, lead qualification for property projects, and post‑visit follow‑ups for malls, resorts, and giga‑projects.

Key Voice AI companies in Saudi Arabia

Several AI-powered companies in Saudi Arabia are developing and scaling AI models to better understand the Arabic language, particularly the Saudi dialect, helping organizations integrate Arabic voice AI agents to streamline their operations and support their business growth. Key examples are:

• Nabrah. A Saudi-built platform that combines autonomous voice agents with a full studio for text‑to‑speech, speech‑to‑text, and voice cloning, all tuned for realistic Saudi Arabic. Its “Nabrah Agents” product automates inbound and outbound calls for lead qualification, support, appointment booking, order confirmation, and surveys, with 24/7 operation, multilingual support, and seamless handoff to human agents when needed. 
• Lahjati. An all‑in‑one Arabic voice AI platform for content creation, with more than 600 professional voices, supporting more than 192 Arabic dialects and performance styles. Its core tools include high‑quality text‑to‑speech for voice‑overs, audiobooks, ads, and e‑learning; speech‑to‑text with up to 99% accuracy for Arabic dialects; and custom voice design to create brand‑specific avatars.
• Mawj. A leading AI voice agent platform in Saudi Arabia that focuses on enterprise reliability and large‑scale call automation. It handles sales, renewals, inquiries, surveys, ticket creation, verifications, order intake, and bookings across calls, WhatsApp, and other digital channels.
• Tzamun. A key provider of AI call‑center and voice‑agent solutions designed for Saudi businesses seeking to automate high‑volume phone interactions, while staying aligned with local regulations and customer expectations.

Challenges:

Even as adoption accelerates, Arabic Voice AI in Saudi Arabia still faces a set of practical, technical, and regulatory hurdles that shape how fast and how deeply it can be embedded in everyday services.

Ibrahim Jabarin, CEO of Hamsa, an AI company specializing in developing advanced models that understand the Arabic language and dialects, stated in an exclusive interview with Sharikat Mubasher that the Arabic voice AI market in the Kingdom faces five main challenges: the limited availability of high-quality voice data; the high cost of graphics processing units (GPUs) and sovereign infrastructure; the scarcity of specialists in deep learning and speech processing technologies; securing significant investment to develop models; and long procurement cycles and preference for global suppliers, along with the absence of unified Arab references to measure model performance.

In addition, regulatory and compliance complexity is a key pitfall facing Arabic voice AI in Saudi Arabia. Requirements around multi‑factor authentication, call recording retention, auditability, data residency, and cross‑border transfers can constrain architecture choices, pushing many companies toward on‑premise or in‑Kingdom cloud deployments and more conservative rollout plans.

User trust and acceptance are another challenge facing this innovative industry as customers and employees remain cautious about fully automated voice interactions, especially for sensitive topics like finance, health, or government services. Building trust requires transparent disclosure that the caller is an AI, clear options to reach a human, and consistent, natural‑sounding Arabic.

 Finally, Saudi Arabia’s ambitious AI agenda is finding one of its most tangible expressions in voice. From government hotlines and bank call centers to hospital appointment lines and retail customer service, Arabic voice AI is moving from pilot projects to everyday infrastructure, powered by local platforms that understand Saudi dialects and operate within the Kingdom’s regulatory boundaries.

The growth in Arabic voice AI in the Kingdom reflects more than a technological shift; it signals a change in how citizens, residents, and customers interact with institutions through natural, bilingual conversations instead of rigid menus and forms. 

The way Saudi Arabia navigates key challenges facing the market, either through investing in local data, talent, and sovereign infrastructure, or through clear, human‑centered design, will determine whether Voice AI becomes a background utility or a defining feature of the Kingdom’s digital identity in the post‑2030 era.

Ghada Ismail

Some investment funds just die quietly. They stop making new deals, their investment period comes to an end, and investors expect their money to be returned. But sometimes, the fund does not quite disappear. It keeps holding companies, waiting for the right moment to sell, while years continue to pass.

This is where the term “zombie fund” comes in.

A zombie fund is generally a private equity, venture capital, or similar investment fund that has reached or passed the end of its intended investment period but continues to exist because it still holds investments that have not been sold or exited. Instead of raising new capital and actively building a portfolio, the fund manager mainly focuses on managing existing assets and eventually returning whatever value can be recovered to investors.

Why Are Zombie Funds Created?

Most private investment funds operate on a defined timeline. A typical fund may spend its first few years identifying and investing in companies before entering a later period focused on managing and exiting those investments.

The problem begins when some portfolio companies cannot be sold within the expected timeframe.

For example, a private equity fund may have invested in a company expecting to sell it after several years. If market conditions deteriorate, valuations fall, or the company struggles to find a buyer, selling the investment may no longer make financial sense. The fund may therefore extend its holding period.

If this happens across several investments, the fund can remain active long after its original investment strategy has effectively ended.

How Does a Zombie Fund Work?

A zombie fund typically does not have the same level of activity as a new or actively investing fund. Its manager is primarily concerned with overseeing existing portfolio companies, making necessary decisions, and looking for opportunities to exit those investments.

The fund may still generate returns for investors, but capital is generally being returned gradually rather than being deployed into a new generation of investments.

For fund managers, this can create a difficult situation. Managing an older portfolio requires time and resources, while the management fees generated by the remaining assets may become less attractive as the fund shrinks.

For investors, meanwhile, capital can remain tied up for longer than originally expected.

Why Do Zombie Funds Matter?

Zombie funds can become particularly important during periods of weak investment activity or challenging exit markets.

When valuations decline or buyers become more cautious, private-market investors may struggle to sell portfolio companies at attractive prices. Rather than accepting a significant loss, a fund manager may decide to wait for market conditions to improve.

This can protect the potential value of an investment, but it can also delay the return of capital to investors.

A large number of aging funds can also affect the broader private equity ecosystem. Capital that remains locked in older investments cannot easily be recycled into new opportunities. This may reduce the ability of investors to commit capital to emerging companies and new fund managers.

Wrapping Things Up…

A zombie fund sits in an unusual space between life and closure. It is still legally and financially active, but its original investment mission has largely run its course.

For investors, understanding zombie funds is important because they highlight one of the less visible realities of private markets: investing does not end when the money is deployed. Exits, valuations, market conditions, and the timing of returns can keep capital tied up for years beyond expectations.

Ultimately, a zombie fund is not defined simply by its age. It is defined by what happens after its active investment life is supposed to have ended. In a market where patience can sometimes unlock value, staying alive may be strategic. But when there is no clear path to an exit or value creation, the same longevity can become a burden.

Ghada Ismail

When people talk about venture capital and private equity, two terms appear repeatedly: Limited Partners (LPs) and General Partners (GPs). While both are essential to an investment fund, they play very different roles.

In simple words, LPs provide the capital, while GPs manage and invest it. Understanding this relationship is key to understanding how venture capital and private equity funds work.

What is a Limited Partner?

A Limited Partner is an investor who commits money to an investment fund but generally does not participate in its day-to-day management.

LPs can include pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, family offices, insurance companies, endowments, banks, and high-net-worth individuals. In the venture capital ecosystem, they provide the majority of the capital that funds use to invest in startups.

LPs typically commit a specific amount to a fund, but they do not necessarily transfer the entire amount upfront. Instead, the GP can make capital calls when investments or other fund expenses require funding.

In return, LPs receive a share of the fund's returns. Their potential liability is generally limited to the amount they have committed to the fund, which explains the term "limited" partner.

What is a General Partner?

General Partners are responsible for running the investment fund.

The GP is typically the venture capital or private equity firm managing the fund. Its responsibilities include identifying investment opportunities, conducting due diligence, negotiating deals, supporting portfolio companies, and deciding when to exit investments.

GPs also manage the fund's relationship with LPs, provide performance updates, and oversee the fund's overall strategy.

Unlike LPs, GPs are actively involved in investment decisions and typically commit some of their own capital to the fund.

The basic financial structure behind LP and GP partnerships

LPs and GPs usually make money in two main ways: management fees and carried interest.

GPs typically charge a management fee to cover the costs of running the fund, such as salaries, office expenses, and other operating costs. They can also earn carried interest, or “carry,” which is a share of the profits made from the fund’s investments.

For example, if a venture capital fund invests in several startups and those investments become highly successful, the GP can receive a percentage of the profits once certain conditions are met.

LPs receive most of the profits generated by the fund after management fees and carried interest are deducted. In simple terms, LPs provide most of the capital, while GPs manage the fund and earn fees plus a share of the profits if the investments perform well.

LP vs. GP: The Key Difference

The easiest way to remember the distinction is:

LP = supplies capital
GP = manages capital

LPs typically do not choose individual startups or companies for investment. Instead, they select funds based on factors such as the GP's track record, investment strategy, team, geographic focus, and expected returns.

GPs then deploy the capital according to the fund's investment strategy.

Why the Relationship is Important

A strong LP-GP relationship can be critical to a fund's success.

LPs want GPs to generate attractive returns while managing risk responsibly. GPs, meanwhile, rely on LPs for the capital needed to execute their investment strategy and often seek to build long-term relationships that can support future funds.

For startups, this relationship may seem distant, but it can have a direct impact. A well-capitalized VC fund has the resources to back promising startups through multiple funding rounds and potentially provide additional support as they scale.

To Wrap Things Up…

LPs and GPs are two sides of the same investment structure. LPs provide the financial firepower, while GPs provide the investment expertise and management.

The model allows institutions, family offices, and other investors to gain exposure to private markets without managing individual investments themselves, while giving professional fund managers the capital needed to identify and build the next generation of companies.

For anyone looking to understand how venture capital works, knowing the difference between LPs and GPs is one of the best places to start.