Federal Minister for IT and Telecom Shaza Fatima Khawaja met with SDAIA President Abdullah bin Sharaf Alghamdi in Riyadh on 2 October 2025 to discuss expanded collaboration on AI cooperation between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
The discussions framed cooperation within Saudi Vision 2030 and Pakistan’s National AI Policy 2025, with particular emphasis on leveraging the Saudi “One Million Saudis in AI” model to accelerate capacity building. Both sides stressed mutual interest in supporting Pakistan’s target to train one million AI professionals and explored practical steps to adapt successful training models for Pakistani institutions.
Officials proposed joint workshops on AI regulations, governance and the establishment of privacy sandboxes as part of broader AI cooperation. Technical collaboration on high performance computing and the creation of a national data repository were also agreed as priority areas to support research and secure data management.
Participants discussed setting up joint R&D funds to pursue collaborative projects in agriculture, education, healthcare and smart cities, and proposed cooperation to develop local large language models in Urdu and Arabic to improve regional language AI capabilities.
Conversations further covered the data economy, cross-border data sharing practices and exchange of experiences on national data bank models. Both sides committed to follow-up working groups to translate the AI cooperation agenda into concrete programs and timelines that benefit Pakistan’s digital transformation.
