Vision 2030 Promised A Tech Economy – Are MENA Founders Actually Benefiting?

Looking at the figures, the momentum behind Vision 2030 is undeniable.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE have committed over $130 billion to AI infrastructure, giga-projects and digital transformation initiatives. Riyadh ranked 23rd among global startup hubs in 2025, according to Startup Genome annual rankings. Saudi startups raised $1.4 billion in venture capital in 2023, and the UAE continues to lead the region in early-stage funding. The case for the region, on paper, is strong.

The conversation among founders who have actually tried to navigate it reads differently. Where the money has actually gone tells a more complicated story: Microsoft invested $1.5 billion in the UAE’s G42. Saudi-US trade forums have announced tech partnerships valued in the billions. GE signed $15 billion in memoranda of understanding tied to Vision 2030.

The buildout has been substantial, and much of the spending is flowing to companies that were already global giants before the strategy launched.

What The Numbers Don’t Tell You

The structural barriers for homegrown founders are well-known among those who have encountered them.

Government procurement in both Saudi Arabia and the UAE tends to favour large, established vendors, with contract sizes, compliance requirements and relationship dynamics that put early-stage companies at a huge disadvantage. According to data cited by regional VC analysts, the average deal size in Saudi Arabia reached $51 million in Q3 2025, a figure skewed heavily toward late-stage, often foreign-backed companies rather than seed-stage local founders.

Saudi Arabia’s Monsha’at SME programme and local content rules are designed to push procurement toward domestic companies, and the 100% foreign ownership rules introduced in tech sectors have brought in capital that does reach local companies. The UAE’s AI strategy includes direct funding mechanisms, visa programmes and innovation platforms aimed at keeping homegrown talent in the region. These programmes exist and they function – founders who have built in the Gulf long enough to have relationships inside government have accessed them.

The Part The Branding Leaves Out

The tension the MENA founder community is starting to articulate is this: Vision 2030 and the UAE’s AI Strategy have been enormously successful at building the conditions that attract Western technology companies to the region. That is, arguably, part of the design. But the question of whether the same conditions are creating a generation of competitive MENA-headquartered tech companies, rather than a sophisticated consumer base for foreign products and services, is one that the region’s investors and policymakers are only beginning to grapple with.

The views are divided. Founders who have built in the Gulf with deep local knowledge and government relationships tend to be warily confident. Those who have arrived expecting the branding to match the reality tend to find the procurement process opaque, the competition asymmetric and the talent market distorted by the salaries that government and large foreign firms can offer.

Both experiences exist, and the distance between them is probably the clearest measure of how far the region’s tech economy has actually come.

What Comes Next For MENA Founders

The region is at a point where the infrastructure argument has largely been won.

The data centres, the regulatory reforms, the investment vehicles and the government appetite are all in place. What remains unanswered is whether that infrastructure translates into a generation of competitive, globally relevant MENA-headquartered technology companies, or whether it primarily functions as a sophisticated landing pad for foreign capital and foreign companies.

The founders most likely to benefit in the near term are those with a comprehensive view of the issue: who have built relationships inside government procurement, who understand which local content rules create genuine advantage, and who have the patience to work within systems that were not designed with early-stage companies in mind. That is a narrower group than the branding of Vision 2030 suggests, but it’s a real one and the opportunity for those founders is larger than it has ever been.

The “big picture” query, of whether the region will produce the next generation of global tech companies rather than just hosting them, is one that the next five years of Vision 2030 will start to answer. The infrastructure is in place, and capital is flowing. It’s yet to be determined whether the conditions for homegrown companies to compete at the top of the market will follow.