The pullback

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WHAT WE’RE TRACKING TODAY

THIS MORNING: Saudia Group is lining up what could be its largest aircraft order yet

Good morning, wonderful people. TASI closed out the first nine months down 9.2% y-o-y at 10.4k points, with September doing most of that work, taking the index to its lowest month-end close of the year.

The volume figures are the more telling part of that report. Market capitalization slipped 2.1% y-o-y while value traded fell 11.8% and the number of trades dropped 13.5%, with average daily turnover down to SAR 4.89 bn. Buyers have stepped back from a market that has not substantially repriced, which makes this a question of participation rather than valuation.

Meanwhile, the preliminary budget statement pencils in a deficit every year through 2029, with no convergence toward balance anywhere in the window. Planning a shortfall that holds roughly flat for four years is a decision to keep funding the program with debt, which makes regular issuance part of the plan.

Setting the target

Saudi wants citizens to fill 70% of energy, industry and mining jobs. No facility across the three sectors will operate unless at least 70% of its staff are Saudi, Energy and Industry and Mineral Resources Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman said at the Made in the Gulf Conference and Forum in Bahrain. The ministry plans to map each sector’s skill needs with universities and training institutes to match graduates to jobs, and to merge the three sectors into one system by the end of November.

REMEMBER- The 70% floor extends a steady Saudization push: In August, the The Kingdom raised localization in private-sector project-management roles to 70%, and it has been lifting nationalization targets across dozens of other professions, some administrative roles now mandated at 100%.

Slot machine

Saudia Group is lining up what could be its largest aircraft order yet, with deliveries from 2031 to 2040: The group has settled on the size of the order, Sanjiv Kapoor, Saudia Group’s executive VP of strategy and Flyadeal’s acting CEO, told Bloomberg.

The last figure on the table was at least 150 jets: Saudia declined to give a number. In February it was in early talks with Airbus and Boeing over at least 150 narrowbody and widebody aircraft, which would be its biggest order in its history. Its current fleet is 196 jets.

Slots held back its last order: Saudia’s USD 19 bn order for 105 Airbus narrowbodies in 2024 fell short of its needed. We “need more than 180 aircraft but there are no slots,” spokesman Abdullah Alshahrani said at the time, adding that Airbus couldn't offer additional deliveries before 2032.

IN CONTEXT- Engine shortages are still slowing deliveries across the industry. Engine shortages and other production bottlenecks are delaying new jets and forcing carriers to keep older aircraft flying for longer. Saudia has {39 firm 787s on order from 2023, and the 787 is one of the programmes hit by those constraints.

The board has the next say: Saudia will issue a formal tender once its board approves the plan. The firm hasn’t decided whether to place one large order or split into tranches.

Another UAE school operator eyes Ajialuna

Alephya wants a majority stake in Ajialuna: Gulf-based school operator Alephya Education — majority-owned by US private equity firm TA Associate — is in advanced talks to buy a controlling stake in Riyadh-based Ajialuna Educational from Sulaiman Alrajhi Holding, Bloomberg reports, citing people familiar with the matter. The transaction could value Ajialuna at up to USD 500 mn. Ajialuna runs 10 private and international schools across Saudi Arabia with more than 17k students. Alephya runs 15 schools across the GCC with more than 20k students.

REMEMBER- Ajialuna has been on the block for a year. Dubai's GEMS Education was among the bidders last September, when a sale was expected to close as early as November 2025 and Alrajhi was said to be seeking a full exit.

In context: Wall Street spent much of the year worried that the rift between Abu Dhabi and Riyadh could disrupt investment flows between two of the region's most closely linked economies, Bloomberg reports. Still, recently, the signals have been friendlier, with UAE Vice President Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed meeting Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman last month. Abu Dhabi has also been quick to back Riyadh against the Houthis. Last month, the UAE condemned Houthi missile and drone attacks on civilian facilities in Khamis Mushait, Abha, and Taif that injured dozens, and reaffirmed its solidarity with the kingdom. If the transaction closes, it would show that private capital is following those diplomatic signals and that buyers still see Gulf schools as a safe bet in wartime.

Aramco wants more from its gas output

Saudi Arabia is on course to produce more gas than it needs at home, and where the surplus goes is still an open decision. Up to 50 bn cbm a year of the Kingdom’s 180 bn cbm of annual output could be spare once domestic demand is met, Wood Mackenzie estimates — enough to make Saudi Arabia a gas exporter for the first time. Plans for an LNG terminal fed by phase two of the USD 100 bn Jafurah field were presented last year and set aside while Riyadh prioritizes domestic supply, the Financial Times reports.

What takes the rest: Switching power plants from oil to gas frees up crude for export, and the push into AI and data centers absorbs more, but neither covers all of it. “If they get close to their production target, they're going to need some other sources of demand,” Wood Mackenzie corporate research director Neivan Boroujerdi said.

What that means for the listing: Aramco’s international LNG assets won’t be included in the new gas company Aramco is preparing to carve out of its upstream and downstream business, according to two people with knowledge of the plans. Without firm plans to build LNG plants, they say there is little rationale for an IPO. Domestic gas sells at government-set fixed prices, producing stable returns better suited to the lease-and-leaseback structure Aramco has used before, people close to the company said.

Why monetize at all: “Aramco doesn’t need the money, the Saudis need the money,” a former Aramco adviser said, with Riyadh committed to tourism mega-projects, aviation hubs and AI. Aramco is also looking at real estate, power, water and oil storage. “The overarching theme is optimizing capital,” the adviser said.

Gulf Cup champions

Saudi Arabia took home its fourth Gulf Cup title on Tuesday, beating the UAE 2-0 in Jeddah and ending a 20-year wait for the trophy. The victory came after the Kingdom’s early exit from the 2026 World Cup, which coach Georgios Donis said helped the team learn from its mistakes and improve during the tournament.

Next up is the 2027 Asian Cup, which the Kingdom hosts from 7 January to 5 February, drawn against Kuwait, Oman, and Palestine.

War watch

The Houthis attacked Yemen’s Aden International Airport with two ballistic missiles and several drones, targeting the runway and passenger terminal, and claimed to have struck military supplies at Badr Camp near the airport, reportedly killing and wounding several Saudi officers.

Closer to home, the group said it had downed a Saudi CH-4 reconnaissance aircraft over Al Jawf during what it called hostile missions, and that it had repelled a Saudi advance east of Al Jawf, killing or wounding dozens and destroying several vehicles. The Saudi-backed coalition, meanwhile, said it intercepted a Houthi missile north of Riyadh and was tracking its launch platform.

REMEMBER- The Houthis have struck a run of airports and sites in the past few days: King Khalid International, Jazan's King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz International, Najran International and Abha airports, plus Aramco's Rabigh refinery, the Khamis Mushait airbase and Asir’s Aqeefah camp.

Pack the family

The Interior Ministry will allow highly skilled foreign workers to bring their families in alongside their own work visas. Eligible workers can bring a spouse, sons under 25 and unmarried daughters, with family entry visas issued in parallel with the employment visa once all requirements are met; residence permits for the family then follow after they arrive.

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The big story abroad

There’s no single biggest story in the international business press this morning, but there is a common theme running throughout most of the top stories: The AI buildout, and who’s paying for it.

Oracle, Broadcom, and SpaceX are going to private credit to pay for AI chips. The three companies are each arranging multi-bn debt packages with Wall Street investment firms to fund chip purchases, shifting the cost of the AI buildout off their own books, the Wall Street Journal reports. Broadcom is working to arrange more than USD 50 bn to finance the custom AI chip it’s developing with OpenAI, with Apollo and Blackstone among the lenders approached. Oracle is in talks with Apollo and Goldman Sachs to fund a large chip purchase, and SpaceX has approached lenders about a USD 40 bn package for Nvidia hardware, the Financial Times reports.

Meanwhile, OpenAI has closed Anthropic’s lead in business AI spending. Spending on the two companies’ models was split roughly evenly in September among some 120k firms tracked by OpenRouter, against Anthropic’s three-quarter share at the start of the year, the WSJ reports. OpenAI cut the price of GPT-5.6 Luna by 80% and Terra by 20% shortly after launching the line in June, and says 2.5 mn businesses now use its products. Retool’s CEO David Hsu said the GPT-5.6 release was the main reason his company moved most of its work to OpenAI, and that he now spends around 20% less than he would on Anthropic models.

Saudi stocks pull back on geopolitical risk and higher rates, not a structural shift

TASI faces a risk-off pullback as geopolitics and higher rates weigh: The main market wrapped up 9M 2026 in the red, closing last month down 9.2% y-o-y at 10.4k points and about 10% below its peak in April, according to its 9M 2026 report (pdf). September did most of the damage, with only SAR 79.15 traded and the index falling 6.2% m-o-m to close at its lowest month-end level of the year.

Activity cooled with it: Value traded fell 11.8% y-o-y to SAR 894.25 bn over the first nine months of the year and the number of trades dropped 13.5% to 79.5 mn, taking average daily value traded to SAR 4.89 bn from SAR 5.48 bn a year earlier. Market capitalization slipped 2.1% y-o-y to SAR 9.12 tn.

What drove September: Geopolitics, higher rates and foreign selling, Alkhair Capital assistant portfolio manager Fardeen Akhtar tells EnterpriseAM. “Regional tensions clearly increased the risk premium investors were willing to attach to Saudi equities,” he said. Foreign firms were net sellers of around SAR 4.33 bn during the month, and SAMA’s 25 bps repo rate hike to 4.50% made liquidity and fixed income more attractive against equities.

February’s opening hasn’t produced steady inflows yet: Foreign institutions accounted for about 37.2% of September purchases and 42.6% of sales, Akhtar said. Economist Ahmad Chreim called the foreign selling “modest,” and said the real test of how the opening reshapes price-setting will come “over the next several quarters, not a single turbulent month.”

A risk-off phase rather than a shift: Investors are “simply becoming less willing to pay aggressive valuations,” Akhtar said, with geopolitical uncertainty, higher rates and weak post-IPO performance all sharpening valuation sensitivity. Strong companies can still raise capital, but pricing will need to be more realistic. Chreim put the lighter turnover down to investors “taking a more measured, wait-and-see posture.”

Five sectors are still up YTD: Ins. (+11.1%), energy (+6.7%), banks (+2.4%), real estate management and development (+1.9%) and pharma (+1.3%). Media and entertainment is down 54.2% and transportation 22.9%.

Behind the gap: Banks have healthy credit quality and lending and deposit growth, insurers are benefiting from premium growth and stronger underwriting, and pharma holds up because healthcare demand is “less cyclical,” Akhtar said. The weakness in media and transportation reflects “earnings deterioration rather than just lower valuations.” Chreim expects both to stabilize “as regional conditions ease.”

Where that leaves valuations: “TASI, excluding Aramco, is trading at around 17.9x earnings and 1.9x book value,” Akhtar said. “I would say the market is more reasonably valued after the correction, but I wouldn't describe the whole market as cheap. So I would call Saudi equities selectively attractive rather than broadly undervalued.” His base case for the quarter is stabilization and volatility rather than a broad rally, with 3Q earnings, foreign flows, rate expectations and turnover the things to watch. “If earnings remain resilient, oil exports stay stable, foreign selling starts to reverse and turnover improves, I think there is room for a rerating.”

Nomu’s listing pipeline has all but stopped: The parallel market saw one IPO in 9M 2026, against 21 a year earlier, leaving 124 listed companies. The index closed at 21.3k, down 16.4% y-o-y, with market capitalization down 30.9% to SAR 33.9 bn and value traded down 42% to SAR 3.91 bn. It has fallen for three months running.

Sukuk and bonds were muted but growing: The index closed at 904.7, its lowest of the year and down 1.2% q-o-q, while total issuance rose 3.1% q-o-q to SAR 773.49 bn and value traded rose 10% q-o-q to SAR 2.04 bn. Corporate paper made up 96.2% of trades but only 36.5% of value, with government paper at 63.5% of value on 3.8% of trades.

Saudi deficits set to persist through 2029 as borrowing costs become the pressure point

Saudi Arabia has budgeted for a deficit in every year through 2029, with no narrowing across the four-year window. The Finance Ministry’s preliminary budget statement (pdf) puts next year’s shortfall at SAR 191 bn, on revenues of SAR 1.2 tn against spending of almost SAR 1.4 tn, followed by SAR 177 bn in 2028 and SAR 192 bn in 2029. “This year will be the 12th deficit in the previous 13 years, and the PBS projections see no end in sight,” Khalij Economics GCC economist Justin Alexander tells EnterpriseAM.

The 2027 shape: Spending is set to fall SAR 43 bn from the updated 2026 estimate of SAR 1.4 tn, with revenues rising to around SAR 1.2 tn. “The Kingdom appears to face a more complex fiscal equation next year,” XTB financial analyst Milad Azar (LinkedIn) says.

How it gets funded: Through a mix of bonds, sukuk and loans across domestic and international markets, alongside alternative financing tools for infrastructure and other projects. The buffers behind that are substantial — external debt stood at SAR 624.9 bn in 2Q 2026 against reserve assets of SAR 1.85 tn, up 8.1% y-o-y, giving reserves 284% cover.

The cost is what changes: The Kingdom has room to keep borrowing in the near term and “has a broad range of financing options and significant financial buffers,” Oxford Economics lead economist Akanksha Samdani says, “however, the cost of borrowing is becoming more important as global interest rates remain higher and debt levels rise.” Azar expects a more selective approach if geopolitical shocks persist, with the challenge being to manage borrowing costs without giving up fiscal sustainability.

Where the space goes: “Although the deficit levels and debt stock remain moderate by international standards, fiscal space is gradually eroding, and the crisis of the current war(s) could further exacerbate this over the medium term, given the impact on revenue, expenditure and financing costs,” Alexander said. If deficits stay elevated for several years, rising debt and a gradual drawdown in reserves would leave less room to absorb the next shock, Samdani said.

The statement gives no standalone allocation for military or defense spending. Azar expects the Kingdom to keep spending on security, critical infrastructure and the energy sector while continuing to fund its transformation goals. “It will reflect both security needs and a broader push to develop domestic industrial capacity,” Samdani said. Localization could support manufacturing and investment, she added, though higher defense spending creates trade-offs with infrastructure and human capital. “The key will be how spending is prioritised and how much of it supports domestic economic activity.”

The diversification side is working: Non-oil revenues reached SAR 505 bn in 2025, now covering 36% of government spending and worth around 15% of nominal GDP, up from 9% a decade ago. “There is clear progress in diversifying its revenue sources,” Azar said, though from a fiscal perspective the capacity to absorb a large and prolonged oil shock remains limited. Samdani said disruption could weaken private investment, external demand and business confidence and raise infrastructure costs, with the government likely to keep backing priority projects while “potentially stretching timelines or prioritizing projects with stronger economic or revenue returns.”

The question underneath all of it: “The promise of Vision 2030 has been that the diversification initiatives financed through borrowing at the national and entity level will more than pay for themselves in the medium term,” Alexander said. “This is not yet visible in the four-year window of the pre-budget statement, so it would be interesting to see longer-term fiscal projections into the 2030s.”

Midad Energy goes big on Algerian gas

Midad Energy is putting USD 3 bn into Algerian gas. Its North Africa arm has earmarked about USD 3 bn for the first phase of a gas project in Algeria’s southern Illizi region, part of a USD 5.4 bn total, with first output expected by end-2028, COO Mourad Belik said in an energy conference in Algeria.

The plan now awaits sign-off from Algeria’s hydrocarbon agency. Once it clears, Midad has two years to start production. Phase one targets 8 mn cbm / day of gas, rising to 11.3 mn, under the production-sharing contract it signed with Sonatrach last October. A second phase, developing the project's western part, would lift output to 20 mn cbm / day.

Al Kathiri crosses the border

Al Kathiri lands its first job abroad. The Saudi contractor’s wholly owned Msandh Al-Emdad secured an award letter from Egypt’s Talaat Moustafa Group to build 160 villas in the Jood project at Oman’s Sultan Haitham City, worth SAR 110 mn, it said in a Tadawul disclosure. The two-year contract, the company’s first outside the Kingdom, is due to be signed on 5 November, the value still subject to a value-engineering review.

More with Syria

The Saudi-Syrian Business Council is setting up an institutional framework to smooth company entry, with about three channels still taking shape, Asharq Al Awsat reports. Two are named so far: A joint team with the Syrian Investment Authority working on land and sea logistics corridors, and a Federation of Saudi Chambers link to Syria’s sovereign fund. The announcement is on the heels of Syrian President Ahmad Al Sharaa’s meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh.

The momentum is already showing in new projects, including Tharaa's USD 1 bn Sham View development and a Boudl hotel in Damascus.

REMEMBER- Saudi-Syrian economic ties have accelerated since a Saudi delegation led by former Investment Minister Khalid Al Falih visited Damascus last year. The visit resulted in 47 agreements across 11 sectors, with investments exceeding USD 6.4 bn. Agreements since then have spanned airports, telecoms, desalination, real estate, and roads, including the SAR 7.5 bn Aleppo airport project, a SAR 3 bn STC telecoms project, USD 2 bn in Abyat developments, and a USD 300 mn roads contract.

Driverless delivery hits the road

The Transport General Authority has launched Nero, a self-driving delivery vehicle, with Ninja, its Deputy for Transport Enablement said on X. Built for last-mile deliveries, Nero runs autonomously within a defined area.

Nero lands amid a fast-moving autonomous-transport push. The Interior Ministry in June updated the Kingdom's traffic rules for self-driving vehicles, making owners, companies included, legally liable for their AVs' violations and accidents. Other driverless projects are further along: WeRide and Uber run a geofenced robotaxi pilot in Riyadh, and the TGA already operates its own self-driving taxi service. Humain and Nvidia, meanwhile, are working to put Level 4 vehicles, which drive themselves within mapped areas, on roads across the Kingdom.

Qassim Cement buys A-Mix

Qassim Cement has been cleared by the General Authority for Competition to concrete producer A-Mix for SAR 65 mn, according to a Tadawul disclosure. It will pay A-Mix’s owners in three installments, drawing on its existing Sharia-compliant credit facilities with commercial banks.

Qassim isn’t short on liquidity: It recently secured a SAR 400 mn financing agreement from the Saudi Industrial Development Fund (SIDF), alongside other facilities, to launch new production lines and expand its operations.

Gulf debt issuance fell 17.5% in 3Q as higher rates bit

Gulf borrowers are in no hurry to lock in today’s rates. GCC bond and sukuk issuance fell 17.5% from the previous quarter and 19.4% from a year earlier to USD 42.5 bn in 3Q 2026, the lowest quarterly total since early 2025, Kamco Invest said in its quarterly report (pdf), citing Bloomberg data. With bond prices down and yields up, many issuers are holding out for better levels.

The slowdown tracked a global one: With inflation remaining sticky, oil hovering around or above USD 100 / bbl and the region’s wars grinding on, major central banks turned hawkish. The US Federal Reserve made its first hike since 2023, the European Central Bank and Bank of Japan also raised, and the 10-year US Treasury yield jumped 53.6 bps — and that was in September alone.

Borrowers across the Gulf still drew heavy order books. Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Qatar each priced sovereign deals covered two to five times over, and Qatar tightened pricing 30 bps on its first international bond of the year. Sukuk rebounded to 44% of regional volume from 15% in 2Q. By market, Saudi Arabia raised the most at USD 15.7 bn, all in sukuk, followed by the UAE at USD 12 bn and Kuwait at USD 8.7 bn. Over nine months, GCC issuance still edged up 3.3% to USD 160 bn.

With bond prices down and yields up, borrowers are less keen to take issuances to market. “Spreads are tight, but overall yields are not attractive for issuers,” Emirates NBD Capital’s head of debt capital, Ritesh Agarwal, told AGBI. “Issuers are less keen on borrowing at current levels, with many preferring to wait until there’s greater stability.”

The cost of that money went up. Coupons rose with global rates — three-month SAIBOR jumped 70.5 bps in September — while the GCC’s USD credit spread widened only modestly, ending the quarter at 88 bps, about half the emerging-market average. Regional indices fell, the MENA Bond index down 4.5% in its worst quarter in four years. Kamco put the sell-off down to higher rates, with Gulf credit quality holding firm, a read the buy side shares. “Despite the war, fixed-income markets are showing no real concern about GCC balance sheets,” Akber Khan, acting CEO at Doha’s AlRayan Investment, told AGBI. “If it costs an additional 1% [compared with six months ago] but a government needs to plug a deficit, then so be it.”

Why it matters: Gulf issuers can still raise large sums at tight spreads, even as the price of doing so climbs. Kamco expects them to keep coming, just on different terms — favoring shorter maturities, more sukuk and carefully timed deals, with higher coupons “a necessary cost of doing business,” its Junaid Ansari told AGBI. With global borrowing on a record run (USD 10.7 tn over nine months, much of the corporate share funding AI) and rates looking higher for longer, funding costs are the number to watch across the region's debt markets into 2027.

MARKETS THIS MORNING-

Asian markets are broadly in the red in early morning trading, with Japan’s Nikkei, South Korea’s Kospi, and the Hang Seng Index all trading down. Futures also point to a similar open on Wall Street, which just came off a losing session as Treasury yields hit fresh highs yesterday.

TASI	10,542	-0.4% (YTD: +0.5%)
MSCI Tadawul 30	1,418	-0.4% (YTD: +2.3%)
NomuC	21,784	+2.2% (YTD: -6.5%)
USD : SAR (SAMA)	USD 3.75 Sell	USD 3.75 Buy
Interest rates	4.25% repo	3.75% reverse repo
EGX30	53,265	-0.1% (YTD: +27.3%)
ADX	9,960	-0.3% (YTD: -0.3%)
DFM	5,897	-0.2% (YTD: -2.5%)
S&P 500	7,802	-0.2% (YTD: +14.0%)
FTSE 100	10,459	-0.8% (YTD: +5.3%)
Euro Stoxx 50	6,180	-1.5% (YTD: +6.7%)
Brent crude	USD 101.75	+1.6%
Natural gas (Nymex)	USD 3.26	+1.9%
Gold	USD 4,145.50	+0.1%
BTC	USD 83,273.32	-1.4% (YTD: -4.9%)
Sukuk/bond market index	886.64	-0.4% (YTD: -3.6%)
S&P MENA Bond & Sukuk	146.49	-0.2% (YTD: -3.6%)
VIX (Volatility Index)	15.08	+0.5% (YTD: -0.9%)

THE CLOSING BELL: TADAWUL-

The TASI fell 0.4% yesterday on turnover of SAR 2.9 bn. The index is up 0.5% YTD.

In the green: Watani Iron Steel (+10%), Arab Sea Information System (+9.8%), and National Gypsum (+5.5%).

In the red: Saudi Ground Services (-5%), Amana Cooperative Ins. (-4.8%), and Arabian Internet and Communications Services (-3.6%).

THE CLOSING BELL: NOMU-

The NomuC rose 0.2% yesterday on turnover of SAR 15.4 mn. The index is down 6.5% YTD.

In the green: Riyadh Steel (+25.4%), Naf Company for Feed for Industry (+10.2%), and

WSM for Information Technology (+9.9%).

In the red: Almuneef (-9.8%), Almuneef Company for Trade, Industry, Agriculture and Contracting (-7.6%), and Arabica Star (-7.3%).

CORPORATE ACTIONS-

Solutions’ shareholders greenlit a 100% capital increase to SAR 2.4 bn from SAR 1.2 bn through bonus shares, according to a Tadawul filing (pdf). The increase will be funded by capitalizing SAR1.2bn from retained earnings, with shareholders receiving one bonus share for every share held. The number of shares will rise to 240mn from 120mn.

Omar Alolayan, Chief of AI and co-founder of Almutanabi

Individual investors in Saudi Arabia can’t watch the market all day, and the recommendations they act on rarely account for their own risk tolerance. Omar Alolayan co-founded Almutanabi to fix that: algorithms that read the market in real time and size trades to each investor's risk, with client money staying in its own brokerage account. After a PhD at MIT and seven years of R&D, the CMA-licensed platform has ranked sixth of 121 Saudi equity funds and is now expanding to institutional clients and Gulf and Arab markets.

Omar Alolayan, Chief of AI and co-founder of Almutanabi: Each week, My Morning Routine looks at how a successful member of the community starts their day — and then throws in a couple of random business questions just for fun. Speaking to us this week is Omar Alolayan (LinkedIn), Chief of AI and co-founder of Almutanabi. Edited excerpts from our conversation:

Enterprise: How did your career begin, and what problem did you set out to solve for individual investors in Saudi Arabia?

Omar Alolayan (OA): I began my career in engineering and scientific research, graduating from King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals before joining Aramco's research center. I later earned a PhD from MIT, where I focused on AI algorithms for engineering and scientific problems. During my PhD, I saw AI's ability to identify complex patterns beyond human capacity. I reached out to my co-founder, Mohamed Al Salloum (LinkedIn), who had experience in automated, high-speed trading based on technical signals. We launched an R&D project that showed us AI, developed with the right scientific methodology, could significantly outperform traditional algorithms.

We identified four key challenges for individual investors: Time, since most can’t monitor markets continuously; unreliable recommendations that may not reflect an investor's risk tolerance; emotion, which can lead investors to hold losing stocks or make poor selling decisions; and traditional investment funds, which often deliver inconsistent performance at relatively high fees.

Almutanabi was built to address these challenges. It's a Shariah-compliant, CMA-licensed platform that analyzes market data in real time and recommends opportunities, portfolio allocations, and liquidity levels based on market conditions and each investor's risk tolerance. Client funds stay in their own brokerage accounts rather than being held by us.

E: How did the idea evolve into the product it is today?

OA: The journey took seven years of R&D. We developed and tested multiple algorithms in live markets, where real-world experience exposed issues that theoretical testing did not. Eventually we developed algorithms capable of managing portfolios with performance competitive with leading Saudi equity funds, but at a much lower cost. We then realized the technology could scale across financial markets and decided to turn it into a product. From the start, our goal was also to build advanced scientific capabilities that could position Saudi Arabia as a leader in the field.

A key early decision was to serve both individuals and institutions. Most companies focus on institutions, but we believed we could address the real, everyday challenges individual investors face, so we designed our products for both.

E: What were the biggest challenges in building Almutanabi?

OA: We faced challenges on several levels. On the technical side, the hardware available to us wasn't sufficient to train AI models on the bns of data points we work with. At the market level, the Saudi market has seen geopolitical conditions over the past three years that affected liquidity and reduced both individuals' and institutions' appetite to invest.

Convincing investors to try the platform was easier than we expected. Investors today are eager to use the latest AI to improve their portfolio performance.

E: How did you deal with these challenges?

OA: We overcame the hardware limitations through several engineering solutions that let us make the most of the resources we had. As for market conditions, we see them as temporary, and we've recently started to see the Saudi market improve.

The most important shift in our journey happened within the R&D phase itself. We didn't arrive at our current algorithms on the first attempt. We went through multiple generations of algorithms, testing each in the real market. The mistakes those generations made are what led us to the version we run today.

E: How do Almutanabi's algorithms analyze stocks and generate buy or sell recommendations, and what data do they use?

OA: Almutanabi's algorithms build a dedicated model for every company listed on the market. Each model is trained on mns of historical data points for that stock so it can learn to spot opportunities at the right time. During trading hours, it reads data in real time, presents investors with the available opportunities, and recommends how to allocate capital among them based on the level of risk the client has set.

E: How do you measure the performance of your recommendations, what are AI's limits in predicting markets, and how do you handle the calls that go wrong?

OA: We measure performance in two stages. Before issuing any signal, we test each stock model on its historical data and don't approve it to issue buy signals until it shows a very high level of accuracy. After issuance, we record every recommendation our models generate and review its performance periodically; we also run real portfolios in the market and publish their performance figures on our website.

On the limits of AI, we need to be candid: no algorithm can predict every market condition, however accurate it is. It may issue a recommendation on a good stock expected to reach its target, only for the whole market to fall on a sudden geopolitical event, and the recommendation fails. The success rate of trading algorithms generally ranges between 50% and 60%. That figure may look modest, but profitability in the markets doesn't depend on the hit rate alone. It depends on the gap between the size of gains on winning trades and losses on losing ones. That's where our advantage lies: we designed our models to control losses when they're wrong. The goal is for investors to earn positive returns over the long term, and to hold up better than the market during downturns.

E: How do you build trust with investors who are cautious about relying on AI for investment decisions?

OA: Through numbers first. Our portfolios managed by Almutanabi have been operating in the Saudi market since March 2025, and their performance during this period ranked sixth out of 121 funds investing in Saudi equities, placing them among the top 5%.

We also don't stop at recommendations. We give investors the full picture: the latest news on the stock and an assessment of whether that news is positive or negative, so they can make informed decisions rather than simply follow a recommendation. The platform adapts to each investor's convictions, too: users can limit their investments to companies that comply with a particular authority's Shariah standards (the Al-Asimi lists, for example), companies that haven't recorded recent losses, one or more sectors of their choice, or companies whose price-to-earnings ratio falls within a range they set.

Finally, we are a recognized entity licensed by the Capital Market Authority (CMA), which is precisely what investors lack in anonymous recommendation groups. The client's money doesn't pass through us in the first place; it stays in their portfolio with their broker, so they don't need to entrust us with their money to benefit from the platform.

E: How large is the market your platform can address, and what will drive revenue growth as you expand from individuals to institutions?

OA: We serve two segments: individuals, through platform subscriptions, and institutions, through customized algorithms tailored to their investment policies and management styles. We see significant potential in both. The Kingdom has more than 7 mn investors, according to the CMA, while algorithmic trading still accounts for about a quarter of trading value, compared with 60-80% in the US. We've also launched Almutanabi Global to offer Shariah-compliant algorithms to US investors, where Saudi investors' US equity trading exceeded SAR 250 bn in a single quarter.

E: Looking ahead, where do you want Almutanabi to be in the coming years?

OA: Our primary goal is to build Saudi technology and localize advanced scientific capabilities in AI research and its applications, helping the Kingdom become a leader in the field. We aim to become the Middle East's leading company in AI research and financial-market applications, operating in line with Islamic Shariah principles. We plan to expand into Gulf and Arab markets next year. Our ambition is regional, but our roots will remain Saudi.

E: What do your mornings look like?

OA: I start my day with Fajr prayer, and I cannot think of a better way to begin the day. After that, I get ready for work and leave early, at 6 AM.

E: Who has had the greatest influence on your career?

OA: Jim Simons, the mathematician who founded Renaissance Technologies and one of the great legends of algorithmic trading, whose fund delivered exceptional returns. An idea he expressed in 1996 inspired me — that price movements are not random, but close enough to random to make extracting any edge from them extremely difficult. That was one of the reasons I entered this field despite its difficulty.

CALENDAR

11-15 October (Sunday-Thursday): WPC Energy Congress, Riyadh Front Exhibition & Conference Center, Riyadh.

11-15 October (Sunday-Thursday): Riyadh Energy Week, Riyadh Front Exhibition & Conference Center, Riyadh.

14-17 October 2027 (Thursday-Sunday): Red Sea Yacht Show, Jeddah Yacht Club, Jeddah.

21 October - 30 December (Wednesday-Wednesday): Riyadh Season, Riyadh.

25-26 October (Sunday-Monday): The Global Proptech Summit, Mandarin Oriental Al Faisaliah Hotel, Riyadh.

26-28 October (Monday-Wednesday): ACHEMA Middle East, Riyadh International Convention & Exhibition Center.

26-29 October (Monday-Thursday): The Future Investment Initiative, King Abdulaziz International Conference Center, Riyadh.

28-29 October (Wednesday-Thursday): Procurement and Supply Chain Futures Forum, Mandarin Oriental Al Faisaliah Hotel, Riyadh.

28-29 October (Wednesday-Thursday): Real Estate Supply Chain Forum, Mandarin Oriental Al Faisaliah Hotel, Riyadh.

30 October-1 November (Friday-Sunday): The New Global Sport Conference, Sofitel Hotel & Convention Centre, Riyadh.

NOVEMBER

11-12 November (Wednesday-Thursday): Aluminum Arabia, The Arena, Riyadh.

16-19 November (Monday-Thursday): Cityscape Global, Riyadh Exhibition and Convention Centre (Malham), Riyadh.

29 November-1 December (Sunday-Tuesday): The UN Trade and Development Global Supply Chain Forum, Riyadh.

29 November-1 December (Sunday-Tuesday): The Global Logistics Forum, King Abdulaziz International Convention Centre, Riyadh.

Signposted to happen sometime in 2026:

2H: Sabic’s USD 6.4 bn Fujian project in China to start production;
November: The Esports Nations Cup, Riyadh;
The World Economic Forum’s Global Collaboration and Growth Meeting, Jeddah;

2027

JANUARY

12-14 January (Tuesday-Thursday): The Future Minerals Forum (FMF), Riyadh.

FEBRUARY

1-3 February (Monday-Wednesday): Energy Regulators Regional Association annual conference, Riyadh.

MARCH

21-25 March (Sunday-Thursday):The World Water Forum, Riyadh.

22–24 March (Monday-Wednesday): Capital Markets Forum, Four Seasons Hotel, Riyadh

APRIL

26-29 April (Monday-Thursday): World Energy Congress, Riyadh.

JUNE

1-3 June (Tuesday-Thursday): The Saudi Entertainment and Amusement Expo, Riyadh Front Exhibition and Conference Center.

Signposted to happen sometime in 2027:

The Ocean Race finishes in Amaala on the Red Sea;
Riyadh-Kudmi transmission line to be completed;
Aero Middle East and Sand & Fun takes place in Thumamah Airport, Riyadh.

Signposted to happen sometime in 2Q 2027:

The Hail Region Water Networks Project is expected to be completed.

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The pullback

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Today at a glance

THIS MORNING: Saudia Group is lining up what could be its largest aircraft order yet

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Saudi stocks pull back on geopolitical risk and higher rates, not a structural shift

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