AI startup begins to enter the Middle East market… Securing local office, sales contract

Artificial intelligence (AI) startups have begun entering the Middle East market by securing local offices and signing sales contracts.

Lutton Technologies, an AI search service company, recently opened an office in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE) to advance into the Middle East.

Lutton is moving into the UAE IT Support Center provided by the National IT Industry Promotion Agency (NIPA), securing a local office, and preparing to establish a formal corporation. After participating in an accelerating program conducted by the Dubai AI Center in the UAE last year, the Middle East was selected as the second overseas market after Japan.

We are also accelerating our expansion into the region. We plan to participate in ‘BIBAN’, the largest startup event in the Middle East, held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia next month to explore the possibility of entering the Saudi region.

Flitto, which boasts an AI-based language solution, is considering attracting local investment and recruiting local employees following the establishment of a corporation in the Middle East next year.

Flitto recently provided its AI simultaneous interpretation solution ‘Live Transnation’ to ‘Zytex Global’, the largest IT exhibition in the Middle East held in Dubai. It supports 38 languages ​​commonly used locally, including English and French, as well as Arabic and Hindi. A project to build Arabic AI data has already been carried out.

Weisen, a medical AI company, has signed a sales contract with Megamind, the largest medical IT company in the Middle East, and is supplying products to large hospitals in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The company’s flagship product is the self-developed AI-based stomach and colonoscope ‘Waymed Endo’.

In recognition of these achievements in the Middle East, it received the first investment as a domestic company from the AIM AI Fund of global accelerator SparkLabs. The AIM AI Fund is a fund in which the Saudi government invested a total of $50 million to foster global AI startups.

Kim Gyeong-nam, CEO of Waysen, said, “Waymed Endo is already supplied and used in surrounding countries such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Egypt,” and added, “We will accelerate our efforts to target the Middle East market by utilizing local partners, including Arab Health.”

In the Middle East, the Saudi government is actively seeking to secure new growth engines based on cutting-edge technology, such as by promoting national projects represented by ‘Neom City’. Recently, as the United States has strengthened sanctions on high-tech exports to its allies due to its technology war with China, it has been turning its attention to technologies possessed by third countries, such as Korea.

AI infrastructure company Ravel Up has been continuously receiving proposals to attract investment and conclude local partner contracts since attending ‘AIM’, the largest investment forum in the Middle East, together with LB Investment, a domestic venture capital (VC), in the first half of the year.

Shin Jeong-gyu, CEO of RavelUp, said, “We expect the development of AI software or services specialized for the Middle East to increase,” and added, “There are some startups that consider the Middle East as a base and even Europe and Africa as service regions.”

Reporter Kim Myung-hee [email protected]