The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s vision for 2030, has witnessed the establishment of many ambitious projects under the leadership of Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman. One such project is Neom, the futuristic $500 billion artificial intelligence metropolis. Saudi Arabia is thus coping with digital transformation and automation, which has become inevitable for the majority of industries. Despite this,  what seems to be needed are business high-tech solutions for corporations and SMEs. Large-in-scale corporations and entrepreneurs alike must keep up with the change that is disrupting their traditional methods of doing business. From such need emerges STC solutions, the services development arm of STC Group.

STC Solutions solves problems related to mining big data, cloud computing, cybersecurity, and IoT (Internet of Things). It plans to be the first MENA Big Data company to file for an Initial Public Offering (IPO). After Aramco’s record $29.4 billion listing, Saudi Arabia’s stock market is set for another interesting year of stock market listings with several sizable IPOs in the pipeline. Solutions is estimated at $500 million if the company sells 20%, it is forecasted to reach a value of approximately $2.4 billion, a source told Reuters in October 2020.

Solutions has launched three mega data centers spending $266 million and aiming to host its digital cloud infrastructure in Riyadh, Jeddah, and Madinah. Ever since The Economist published a story in 2017 titled, “The world’s most valuable resource is no longer oil, but data,” the topic has generated a great deal of discussion, and “Data is the new oil” has become a common refrain. So is data Saudi Arabia’s new oil?