NTT DATA to Launch AI Factory Lab in Riyadh to Accelerate Enterprise AI Adoption Across MEA
NTT DATA has announced plans to launch its AI Factory Lab in Riyadh, a facility designed to help organisations across the Middle East and Africa move from AI experimentation to production-ready deployments. Scheduled to open in September 2026, the lab will combine NTT DATA’s AI, digital business and technology services expertise with technologies from ecosystem partners including Cisco and NVIDIA. It will provide executive briefings, AI strategy workshops and hands-on demonstrations aimed at helping organisations identify high-value AI use cases, validate potential business outcomes and develop strategies for deployment.
The facility will bring together infrastructure, platforms and services to provide organisations with an integrated environment for evaluating and scaling AI workloads. “While interest in AI continues to grow, many organisations are looking for a practical path from experimentation to business outcomes,” said Hani Nofal, Executive Head of Infrastructure Solutions, Middle East and Africa, NTT DATA. “The AI Factory Lab brings together the expertise, technologies and ecosystem partnerships needed to help clients identify the right use cases, deploy AI securely and scale with confidence.”
Located in Riyadh, the lab is also intended to support Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 objectives by helping public- and private-sector organisations adopt technologies aimed at improving productivity, innovation and economic growth. The AI Factory Lab will showcase AI applications across areas including employee productivity, customer experience, intelligent operations, cybersecurity, networking, software development and industry-specific business processes.
Organisations will be able to explore how agentic AI can automate workflows, support decision-making, improve customer and employee experiences, and extract greater value from enterprise data. One of the featured demonstrations will be the Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA, which will demonstrate how organisations can build, deploy, secure, govern and scale AI workloads on enterprise-grade infrastructure.
The demonstration will cover the infrastructure, data, security and governance capabilities required to move AI projects from experimentation into production while maintaining visibility, compliance and operational resilience. Cisco will contribute networking, security, observability and collaboration technologies to the lab, while NVIDIA will provide accelerated computing and AI software technologies supporting generative AI, agentic AI, computer vision and digital twin workloads.
“In the race to adopt AI, organisations need more than just technology — they need a foundation of absolute trust and control,” said Cassie Roach, VP of Partner Sales, AI Infrastructure & Connectivity at Cisco. “By integrating the Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA into their AI Factory Lab, NTT DATA provides a secure, validated sandbox where customers can test, refine and prove their AI strategies with confidence before making a full-scale commitment, turning ‘what if?’ into reality.”
Dirk Barfuss, Director of EMEA Channel at NVIDIA, said organisations across the Middle East and Africa were increasingly moving AI projects from exploration towards production. “Through the NTT DATA AI Factory Lab in Riyadh, customers can experience the Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA firsthand, helping them validate high-impact use cases and move from experimentation to practical business outcomes with confidence,” he said.
