Sourced records of Chinese AI deployments across the Global South and the Middle East

Under an agreement announced by Horizon Egypt Developments, Hikvision is to supply AI-powered video security, vehicle recognition, centralized command-and-control, smart access control, digital signage and smart poles across the SA'ADA New Cairo, SA'ADA Sahel and SA'ADA Boutique developments. Egyptian coverage (Al-Ahram, TechNews-EG) describes the signed instrument as a memorandum of understanding; Hikvision has published no material of its own on the deal.

iFlytek signed a 3-year, six-milestone research agreement (3 Aug 2020) with Egypt's Ministry of Communications & IT (its AI & High-Performance Computing Applications Center) to build Arabic speech recognition, speech synthesis and a Chinese–Arabic automatic speech-translation system, branded part of iFlytek's 'Speech Silk Road'.

Tiandy sold AI surveillance cameras and software (including facial recognition and claimed race/ethnicity detection) to Iranian entities including the IRGC, military, police and state defence-electronics firm Sairan, under a five-year contract with ~8 planned local staff; documented on Tiandy's own site as Iran 'success cases'.

United Imaging supplied digital PET/CT and high-end MRI to Al-Khalidi Medical Center (Amman) to enhance diagnostic/theranostic services for cancer patients; its uAI platform is included.

'OmanEye' (阿曼眼) is a video-IoT platform built by China Telecom Global together with Tianyi Shilian for Tadoom, the ICT subsidiary of Omantel, and presented at COMEX 2025 in Muscat in September 2025. It is deployed on Oman's national cloud and offers interactive-map monitoring of surveillance points plus AI functions including second-level intrusion alerts for defined areas, licence-plate recognition and watchlisting, and crowd-flow counting with safety alerts, covering consumer, home, enterprise and government scenarios.

Pony.ai operates a commercial Robotaxi service in Doha with Qatar's national mobility operator Mowasalat (Karwa); rides are fare-charged through the Karwa app. The programme began with public-road testing in August 2025 and launched a commercial pilot with onboard safety operators in December 2025, covering Old Doha and West Bay (Corniche, National Museum of Qatar, Museum of Islamic Art, Old Doha Port) plus a Hamad International Airport connection. At the AEMOB Forum on 7-9 September 2026 Pony.ai ran Gen-7 Robotaxis with no onboard safety operator.

Media City Qatar and Huawei signed an MoU at Web Summit Qatar (24 Feb 2025) to build a 'smart media campus' featuring AI-powered access control, intelligent asset management, multi-cloud media platform integration and next-generation storage; no capacity/investment figures disclosed.

Huawei's first Middle East cloud region, launched in Riyadh on 4 Sep 2023 with three availability zones; hosts Pangu large models and the ModelArts AI-development platform. At LEAP 2025 Huawei pledged a further US$400M over five years for AI-ready infrastructure; serves 1,000+ customers and 300+ partners, and the Saudi government built an Arabic LLM on the platform.

Alibaba Cloud's Saudi JV, Saudi Cloud Computing Company (SCCC), launched services on 6 Jun 2022 with two Riyadh data centres, of a planned 16 nationwide.

Tencent Cloud announced its first Middle East cloud region in Saudi Arabia at LEAP 2025 (10 Feb 2025): two availability zones and >US$150M pledged, with AI services including E-KYC, Palm AI, an AI Agent Development Platform and multilingual digital-human tech; region expected operational in 2025.

Lenovo and Alat (a PIF subsidiary) completed a US$2B zero-coupon convertible-bond investment (8 Jan 2025) and broke ground on a Riyadh manufacturing campus to make PCs and servers (including AI servers), with production expected in 2026; Lenovo is establishing its Middle East & Africa HQ in Riyadh.

ICS Arabia, Shanghai's Lumaotong Group (LMT) and China Mobile International agreed (Sep 2023) to build the 'Desert Dragon' data centres — 187 MW across Riyadh, Jeddah, Dammam and NEOM — explicitly to support cloud hosting, AI applications, cybersecurity and big data; ~US$1.9B over three years, Phase-1 65 MW Riyadh targeted for 2026.

The Saudi Company for AI (SCAI), wholly owned by PIF, invested SAR 776m (US$206.54m) to form the JV 'SenseTime MEA' in Riyadh — an R&D centre building computer-vision and deep-learning solutions for smart cities, healthcare and education, with technology transfer to the Kingdom.

King Abdullah Financial District (KAFD) signed an MoU with SenseTime (29 Jun 2022) to pilot a scalable Smart City Platform — smart building/parking/office management and contactless access — across KAFD's 94-tower Riyadh district.

SenseTime (via its SenseTime MEA JV) reported winning a contract to provide facial-recognition services for the NEOM megacity project, alongside a Mawhiba education-AI enrichment partnership, as part of its Saudi investment-for-deals strategy.

SenseTime MEA and King Saud University signed a partnership (11 Nov 2025) to launch a joint AI Innovation Center in Riyadh; SenseTime MEA is building a GPU cluster to supply compute for teaching, research and live projects across health, energy, logistics, smart cities and environmental monitoring.

Prosperity7 Ventures, Saudi Aramco's VC arm, participated in a ~US$400M round for Zhipu AI (mid-2024), valuing the GLM-model maker at ~US$3B — reported as the largest single China AI-model financing to date and Prosperity7's first China generative-AI unicorn bet.

Dahua Technology Middle East formed a JV (announced Mar 2024) with Alat, a PIF-owned company, to build a Saudi manufacturing facility for AIoT products for smart cities and enterprises, starting with CCTV/project products; first rollout targeted end-2024.

Aramco-backed Prosperity7 Ventures led an investment bringing Insilico Medicine's Series D to US$95M (10 Aug 2022); Insilico uses generative AI for drug discovery.

Aramco's Prosperity7 Ventures led a US$73M round in Spirit AI, a Chinese embodied-intelligence / humanoid-robot startup founded Feb 2024.