GLOBAL-AI-SUMMIT
21.10.2020 18:01:06 CEST | Business Wire | Press release
The World Bank and Saudi Arabia have announced a long-term partnership to accelerate the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in developing nations in support of economic and development goals. The objective is to ensure that no nation is left behind in the race to unlock the value of AI while ensuring the appropriate safeguards are in place to manage the risks associated with AI.
Under the partnership, the World Bank and Saudi Arabia, represented by the Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority (SDAIA), will cooperate to assist countries in creating policies and initiatives that harness the power of AI to support national development and growth. AI and related technologies are expected to unlock an additional $15tn of economic value worldwide before 2030, but many developing nations do not have yet the technical readiness to share in this new wealth.
The partnership will support target nations to identify gaps in their own readiness and ability to utilize AI and data and develop their own AI policies for innovation and acceleration of AI based on sustainable development goals. As part of this initiative, AI country readiness analysis will be conducted to identify key opportunities and challenges as well as policy options to increase responsible AI diffusion. The initiative will first focus on the African continent given the potential for digital-powered development.
The initiative was announced today by HE Esam bin Abdullah Alwagait, Director of the National Information Center (NIC), and Mr. Makhtar Diop, the World Bank Vice President of Infrastructure, at the Global AI Summit in Riyadh.
HE Dr. Alwagait said: “Through this partnership with the World Bank, Saudi Arabia aims to help all countries of the world to unlock the value of artificial intelligence and to share in the benefits of data-driven decision making to support economic and social growth. Data and AI are at the heart of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030, and through the development of our own AI agenda and policies, we have developed skills and resources that we want to share to ensure that all nations are equally prepared to harness the value of AI.”
Makhtar Diop also highlighted that “AI offers significant potential to create new opportunities and solve complex development challenges to end poverty and build prosperity. The technology also comes with risks which, if left unattended, can threaten to inflate the widening AI divide between—and within—developing countries, increasing social inequality and leaving millions, if not billions, even further behind. This initiative aims to help governments harness AI technologies while adopting the appropriate safeguards for ensuring privacy and protection as well as inclusivity and unbiased algorithms.”
The new partnership will build on the on-going work of the World Bank to actively help developing countries increase their readiness on AI opportunities and risks for technological leapfrogging. There is an emphasis on scaling innovative use of responsible AI in various applications for development such in public sector, energy, agriculture, transport, education and health.
About the Global AI Summit
Taking place in Riyadh on 21st and 22nd October 2020, the Global AI Summit connects key decision makers from government, academia, industry and enterprise, technology companies, investors, entrepreneurs and startups, to initiate discussions and collaboration on artificial intelligence, including its applications, impact on social and economic development, and the global challenges and opportunities of AI.
https://www.theglobalaisummit.com/
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201021005762/en/
Link:
About Business Wire
Subscribe to releases from Business Wire
Subscribe to all the latest releases from Business Wire by registering your e-mail address below. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Latest releases from Business Wire
Radial Selects Riskified to Power Payment Fraud and Refund/Return Protection for Merchant Client Portfolio9.3.2026 15:00:00 CET | Press release
The partnership brings Riskified’s AI-powered platform for payment fraud, refund claim, and return abuse protection to Radial’s global network of merchants Riskified (NYSE: RSKD), a leader in ecommerce fraud and risk intelligence, today announced a strategic partnership with Radial, a leading 3PL set to become Paxon later this year. Radial will integrate with Riskified’s AI-powered platform to help its merchants approve more legitimate orders and reduce losses from payment fraud, including many merchants that use Shopify as their ecommerce platform. Radial supports many of the world’s most recognized retail brands with a global ecommerce fulfillment network of more than 20 centers across North America, helping merchants deliver orders quickly and cost effectively. By bringing Riskified’s AI-powered fraud decisioning into its commerce ecosystem, Radial gives merchants the surgical ability to calibrate the checkout experience according to risk—without slowing fulfillment. This also suppo
Boomi Activates Data for the Enterprise9.3.2026 14:00:00 CET | Press release
New platform innovations activate contextual data to power production-scale enterprise AI, with a new European platform instance for localized control Boomi™, the data activation company, today announced new capabilities within the Boomi Enterprise Platform. Data activation brings data to life across systems and processes, delivering it with the right context and timing to power everything from AI to BI. The Boomi Enterprise Platform, the foundation that puts data in motion, now adds new semantic context to help AI agents operate on grounded business realities, expands governed SAP data movement with change data capture, enhances transparency and oversight across agentic workflows, and introduces a dedicated European platform instance for localized data control. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260309682526/en/ Boomi Activates Data for the Enterprise “Last year, Boomi helped enterprises move from experimentatio
Thredd Accelerates in 2026 with its Global Platform and Delivering Enterprise-Scale Outcomes9.3.2026 14:00:00 CET | Press release
Thredd, the AI-first issuer processing platform, today announced a major acceleration phase for 2026, marked by the appointment of Marilyn McDonald as Chief Technology Officer and the promotion of Ryan Dew to Chief Product Officer. Thredd has never been in a stronger position. A fully cloud-native version of its global platform is live in the United States, with end-to-end credit capabilities launching in the coming months alongside a state-of-the-art debit platform and modern unified ledger. Marilyn McDonald joins as CTO to lead the next phase of enterprise-scale execution. She succeeds Edwin Poot, who helped lead the modernisation of Thredd’s architecture and technology stack, laying the foundation for cloud-native and agentic growth. Marilyn brings global transformation experience from senior roles at Citigroup, Mastercard, Expedia Group and StubHub. Her focus is on strengthening operational readiness, bank-grade delivery, enterprise execution and continuous resilience as Thredd sca
MariaDB to Acquire GridGain: Architecting the Real-Time Foundation for the Agentic Enterprise9.3.2026 14:00:00 CET | Press release
Strategic acquisition unites MariaDB’s mission-critical relational database with GridGain’s extreme in-memory speed to power the next generation of AI applications MariaDB plc today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire GridGain Systems, Inc., the pioneer of in-memory computing and creator of open source Apache Ignite. By merging MariaDB’s AI-ready relational database with GridGain’s scalable, in-memory power, MariaDB is setting a new industry standard: sub-millisecond data infrastructure for the agentic era. Closing the AI Latency Gap As enterprises move beyond passive chatbots toward agentic AI – autonomous systems that reason, plan and execute tasks – they are quickly becoming limited by traditional data architectures. AI agents require real-time access to massive datasets with zero friction. This acquisition bridges that gap by fusing: MariaDB’s reliability: Proven, ACID-compliant transactional integrity for the world’s most sensitive data, with nativ
Safe Software Announces the Peak of Data and AI 2027, a Premier Global Conference, in London, UK9.3.2026 14:00:00 CET | Press release
Safe Software (Safe) officially announced today the return of its global user conference, the Peak of Data and AI, taking place March 9–11, 2027, at the QEII Centre in London, UK. A Partner Summit will kick off the event on March 8, 2027, bringing together Safe’s global partner community ahead of the main conference. Hosted every two years, the Peak of Data and AI has evolved from Safe Software’s long-running user conference into a premier global event for data and AI professionals. The conference alternates between North America and international locations, with previous events held in Bonn, Germany (2023) and Seattle, Washington (2025). “At the Peak of Data and AI, we bring together the people who are shaping how organizations use data to drive real-world outcomes,” said Don Murray, CEO of Safe Software. “With London as our host city in 2027, we’re excited to connect with the global community to learn, listen, and share what’s next for data and AI.” The three-day conference will feat
In our pressroom you can read all our latest releases, find our press contacts, images, documents and other relevant information about us.
Visit our pressroom