Saudi Arabia Is Becoming More Saudi. Gulf Experience Is No Longer Enough.

 

I spoke to an Executive this week who has worked in the Gulf for 20 years. He lives in Dubai. He runs the commercial side of an energy technology business with a potentially significant Saudi opportunity in front of it. 

He is not naive. He is not new to the region. And he is certainly not one of those Western executives who arrives believing the Gulf is all sand, sheikhs and unlimited money. He is the opposite. He is very good. He is flying to a major investment conference in Saudi Arabia, and during our conversation I asked him who he expected to be in the room. He admitted he was not entirely sure whether the people he would meet would be Saudi nationals.

Then, while talking about what they might wear, he used the word Kandura. Kandura is the Emirati word. In Saudi Arabia, it is a thobe. This one word is almost the whole article. Not because he had done anything wrong. But because 20 years of genuine Gulf experience had given him a Dubai vocabulary, and he was about to walk into a Saudi room.

This is something I see more and more when it comes to doing business in Saudi Arabia. The country is becoming more specifically and confidently itself, and some of the assumptions that carried international businesses through the region for the last 20 years were formed somewhere else.

Knowing the Gulf no longer necessarily means knowing Saudi Arabia. And increasingly, knowing Saudi Arabia is not enough either. You need to understand the Saudi Arabia that is emerging now.

 

What has actually changed in Saudi Arabia?

A great deal, and quickly. Four shifts, all documented, all inside roughly two years:

• Riyadh became the price of entry. The Regional Headquarters programme was launched in February 2021 by the Ministry of Investment and the Royal Commission for Riyadh City. Since 1 January 2024, foreign companies contracting with Saudi government entities above SAR 1 million have had to base their regional headquarters in the Kingdom. The original target was 500 multinationals by 2030. By the end of 2025, the Royal Commission for Riyadh City reported more than 700 international companies attracted.
• Saudisation became profession-specific. It is no longer a broad conversation about employing more Saudi nationals. Through 2026 the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development set quotas role by role: 70% in procurement, 60% in marketing and sales, 30% across 46 engineering roles, and 100% for 69 additional administrative professions from 5 April 2026.
• The national workforce has grown enormously. The Ministry reports that more than 2.48 million Saudis have entered the private sector since 2020. Saudi unemployment fell to 6.4% in the first quarter of 2026.
• Saudi Arabia is building technology around its own context. On 31 August 2026, at LEAP in Riyadh, Adobe expanded its partnership with the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology and HUMAIN, the PIF-backed AI company. The commitment is valued at more than $4 billion. At its centre is HUMAIN Image 1, an image-generation model designed to produce culturally aligned imagery from Arabic-language prompts.

These developments may appear unrelated. They are not. They point towards the same thing. Saudi Arabia is not simply changing. It is becoming more Saudi. And that matters enormously for foreign companies wanting to do business there.

 

Why is Gulf experience no longer enough for Saudi Arabia?

Because the label “Middle East experience” has been devalued twice. There was a time when saying you had Middle East experience carried considerable weight. Then Middle East experience needed to become Gulf experience. Now Gulf experience increasingly needs to become Saudi expertise. And even that is becoming more granular. Which sector. Which stakeholders. Which generation. Government or private sector. Riyadh or Jeddah. A ministry, a giga-project, a family business or a Saudi multinational.

A strategy that worked in Dubai is not automatically a strategy for Riyadh. That is not a cultural nicety. Since January 2024, it has been a procurement fact with a date attached to it. And we have to remember this: The more experienced the executive, the more likely they may be to carry the wrong map with confidence. Twenty years in Dubai produces genuine expertise. It also produces a vocabulary, a tempo, a network of intermediaries and a mental model of how the Gulf works that was formed in a different country.

This is why I was impressed by the executive I spoke to this week. Not because he knew everything. Because he knew he did not. He could feel where the gaps were, and instead of assuming two decades of Gulf experience would transfer automatically, he was asking questions before he entered the room. That instinct is rarer than it should be. The smartest international executives I meet are not the ones who know the most. They are the ones prepared to ask which parts of what they know no longer apply.

 

Who is actually in the room now?

Increasingly, Saudi nationals. And importantly, they are increasingly sitting in exactly the functions that influence whether your business succeeds. Look again at where the 2026 quotas landed. Procurement at 70%. Sales and marketing at 60%. Engineering at 30%. Administration at 100% across a long list of roles.

These are not ceremonial positions. Procurement evaluates your proposal. Engineering assesses whether you are technically qualified. Sales and marketing is the function you will be negotiating against. For years, a great deal of international business in the Kingdom ran through an expatriate intermediary layer. The expat manager often sat somewhere between the international supplier and the Saudi client, translating not simply language but expectations and ways of working. That landscape is changing. International businesses are increasingly selling directly to Saudi decision-makers, competing alongside Saudi companies, and working with Saudi teams.

This raises the cultural intelligence bar. And it often happens quietly. Nobody sends you an email saying the room has changed, please update your Saudi strategy. Instead, your usual approach simply does not land as well. The response takes longer. The meeting goes well and nothing happens afterwards. The proposal does not move. And because nobody tells you explicitly what went wrong, you may never connect the outcome with the assumptions you brought into the room.

 

Saudi Arabia is not waiting for outsiders to define it

This may be the bigger shift. Look again at what HUMAIN and Adobe are doing. Saudi Arabia is not simply importing Western AI and using it. It is helping build technology designed to understand Saudi and Arabic cultural context, from Arabic-language prompts, for a market of over 400 million Arabic speakers. (I talked about it this week).

HUMAIN’s chief executive, Tareq Amin, put the principle simply: AI should understand the context in which it operates.

Now set that alongside what is happening elsewhere. The heritage work around AlUla. The growing prominence of Founding Day. The investment in Saudi culture, art and design. The deliberate visibility of national dress in professional and international settings. A single idea runs through all of it. Modernisation does not mean Westernisation.

The Kingdom can modernise extraordinarily quickly while becoming more confident in its own identity. Those two things are not in tension. And yet I still see international businesses unconsciously approaching Saudi Arabia as though progress means becoming more like London, New York or Dubai. This has commercial consequences.

A company can arrive with an excellent presentation explaining what its solution does for global standards, international investors, or its home market. The Saudi stakeholder opposite is asking a much more important question. What does this do for Saudi Arabia? Not for your board. Not for your investors. Not for the international market. For Saudi Arabia.

And increasingly there is a second question. What could this become for Saudi Arabia? Could the Kingdom build capability around it? Could Saudis operate it? Could it become something Saudi Arabia owns, develops, or eventually exports elsewhere? The companies that understand those two questions tend to have very different conversations.

 

Why AI makes doing business in Saudi Arabia easier, and more dangerous

AI has transformed how quickly a business can prepare for a new market. I use it constantly. It can identify companies, map sectors, research executives, summarise government initiatives and find prospects. It does in minutes what used to take hours.

But it cannot compensate for a flawed mental model of Saudi Arabia. If you start from the belief that Riyadh is essentially Dubai with more paperwork, AI will help you act on that belief faster, more fluently, and with much better formatting. That does not make the assumption correct. I have watched it get important Gulf dates wrong. I have watched it flatten six very different GCC countries into one homogenous Middle Eastern culture. And because it nearly always gives you an answer, it creates the illusion that the research has been done.

This matters more in a country that has named 2026 its Year of AI and is now building its own models. Your counterpart is not impressed by the fact that you used AI. They are working to a national mandate on it.The danger is not that AI is useless. Far from it. The danger is that AI can make you confidently wrong at speed. And in Saudi Arabia, being confidently wrong is expensive.

 

What should Western businesses do differently?

You do not need to throw away everything you know about the Gulf. You do need to interrogate it. Five places I would start.

1. Audit your Saudi strategy for Dubai residue. Look at your presentation, language, case studies and assumptions. Which parts are genuinely Saudi-specific, and which are UAE experience wearing a Saudi label? A Dubai case study can be valuable. Presenting it as evidence that you understand Saudi Arabia is something very different.
2. Know your own compliance position before someone else raises it. If you intend to contract with Saudi government entities, the regional headquarters requirement is not an administrative footnote. Know where you stand on it, and know how the profession-level quotas affect the local team you are proposing. Arriving without an answer signals that you have not looked.
3. Build a stakeholder map, not a contact list. Who evaluates. Who approves. Who influences. Who can block. Who has genuine execution power, and who simply has an impressive title. Those are not always the same people. Assume the technical evaluator needs to be brought in early rather than surprised late.
4. Rebuild the opening of your pitch around Saudi Arabia. Before explaining how impressive your company is, answer the question your Saudi counterpart is far more likely to care about. What does this do for Saudi Arabia? Then ask the more ambitious one. What could Saudi Arabia do with this? That shift can change an entire conversation.
5. Use AI for the research. Keep human judgement for the context. Use it to find the companies, people and roles. Then verify. Check the dates, the names, the terminology. And question the assumptions behind the answer it gave you.

Because finding 50 potential Saudi prospects is now remarkably easy. Understanding which 5 actually matter, and how you should approach them, is where the real work begins.

 

Finding the people is only the beginning

This is exactly what I am teaching in my live masterclass on 7 September. I will show you how I combine AI, LinkedIn and cultural intelligence to identify the right Gulf prospects, understand the people behind the titles, and start building credibility before the first conversation happens. You will see how to identify 10 to 50 relevant Gulf prospects in around 15 minutes, research them intelligently, and use LinkedIn to position yourself before you send the first message.

Technology can dramatically accelerate the search. It cannot replace judgement. And in Saudi Arabia, knowing who to approach is only useful if you understand the context in which you are approaching them.

Join my Gulf Unlock masterclass on 7 September.

The best operator I spoke to this week was not the one who knew the most about the region. He was the one who understood that some of what he knew might no longer apply. That is becoming one of the most valuable skills in the Gulf. Saudi Arabia is not becoming more like you. It is becoming more like itself.

 

Frequently asked questions

Is Gulf experience enough for doing business in Saudi Arabia? Not necessarily. Experience in the UAE and the wider GCC remains valuable, but Saudi Arabia increasingly requires country-specific and often sector-specific understanding. Its regulatory environment, national workforce, business culture and economic priorities have moved quickly under Vision 2030. International businesses need to understand Saudi Arabia on its own terms rather than applying a generic Gulf strategy.

Do foreign companies need a regional headquarters in Riyadh? For most Saudi government contracts, yes. Since 1 January 2024, foreign companies contracting with Saudi government entities above SAR 1 million have had to base their regional headquarters in the Kingdom under the Regional Headquarters programme, launched in February 2021. The original target was 500 multinationals by 2030; the Royal Commission for Riyadh City reported more than 700 international companies attracted by the end of 2025.

How is Saudisation changing how foreign companies do business in Saudi Arabia? Saudisation now applies profession by profession rather than as a broad workforce ratio, and it affects the functions international companies deal with directly. Announced 2026 measures include 70% in procurement, 60% in marketing and sales, 30% across 46 engineering roles, and 100% for 69 additional administrative professions. More than 2.48 million Saudis have entered the private sector since 2020.

How should I prepare for a Saudi business meeting? Research the people as thoroughly as the organisation. Understand who influences the decision, which Saudi priorities your proposal supports, and whether assumptions drawn from other Gulf markets actually apply. AI can accelerate the research considerably, but names, dates, terminology and cultural assumptions should always be verified before anything reaches a Saudi inbox.

What does HUMAIN’s partnership with Adobe tell international businesses? That Saudi Arabia is building technology around its own context rather than importing it wholesale. Announced at LEAP in Riyadh on 31 August 2026 and valued at more than $4 billion, the partnership includes HUMAIN Image 1, an image-generation model producing culturally aligned imagery from Arabic-language prompts. The wider signal is that modernisation in Saudi Arabia does not mean Westernisation.