IBM and Lenovo Join Forces to Scale AI Capabilities Across the Kingdom

IBM and Lenovo have announced at LEAP 2025 a planned expansion of their strategic technology partnership designed to help scale the impact of generative AI for clients in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

IDC expects annual worldwide spending on AI-centric systems to surpass $300 billion by 2026, with many leading organizations in Saudi Arabia exploring and investing in generative AI use cases as they prepare for the emergence of an ‘AI everywhere’ world.¹

Building upon their 20-year partnership, IBM and Lenovo will collaborate to deliver AI solutions comprised of technology from the IBM watsonx portfolio of AI products, including the Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority (SDAIA) open-source Arabic Large Language Model (ALLaM), and Lenovo infrastructure. These solutions are expected to help government and business clients in the Kingdom to accelerate their use of AI to improve public services and make data-driven decisions in areas such as fraud detection, public safety, customer service, code modernization, and IT operations.

Today’s announcement represents an important step in the longstanding relationship between IBM and Lenovo. We’re pleased to deepen our partnership to bring IBM’s fit-for-purpose generative AI offerings together with Lenovo’s infrastructure solutions for both on-premises and cloud use to provide customers in Saudi Arabia with solutions designed to meet their unique needs in this fast-paced growing market.

– Giovanni Di Filippo, President of EMEA, Infrastructure Solutions Group, Lenovo

Organizations in Saudi Arabia are currently able to access ALLaM through watsonx; use advanced AI capabilities to train, tune, and deploy ALLaM; and run their AI workloads on Lenovo infrastructure for both on-premises and cloud use cases. The new solutions are expected to provide additional ways for clients to harness the power of Generative AI with an approach based on transparency, trust, and choice.

IBM and Lenovo have a rich history of joint innovation and partnership that spans two decades. We look forward to this new collaboration to bring together Lenovo’s infrastructure offerings and IBM’s AI portfolio, which utilizes small, efficient, open-source models targeted for specific use cases and geographic requirements. Together we will drive even greater value for our mutual clients in the Kingdom.

– Ayman AlRashed, Regional Vice President, IBM Saudi Arabia

Statements regarding IBM’s and Lenovo’s future direction and intent are subject to change or withdrawal without notice, and represent goals and objectives only.