Qatar's Ooredoo discusses Nvidia's Middle East launch

This is so significant for the company, for the country and for the region. And I want you to explain to us the origins of this deal, how this partnership came to be and specifically what it's going to entail. Good morning to you, Sir. Well, thank you for having me. Look, we're extremely excited to have announced to become what is called an NCP and NVIDIA cloud partner. This falls straight into our strategy of becoming and a leading digital infrastructure provider in the region. As you've mentioned, we're going to bring AI capabilities within five countries. This includes Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, Tunisia and Algeria. And this is not just the typical data centre racks and GPUs. We're providing a whole AI stack with the thanks of the partnership with NVIDIA to all the stakeholders in the region. This will give access to governments, SM, ES, large corporations, start-ups, leading access to this technology, which we know today's completely transform transformative economically. So we're extremely pretty proud to be an enabler of this and when it comes to enabling growth in the region, Aziz, the deal says that you're going to be using Nvidia's Tensor Core GPUs. Explain to me what that is and how does it differ from other NVIDIA chips? These are GPUs which are catered latest generation GPUs, which are catered specifically for AI. They will be able to deliver extreme machine learning and model utilization of these AI model and generative AI. The use cases we can see deployed are spreading across the whole spectrum from citizen services for the government, enhancing, enhancing productivity and efficiency for general corporation all the way to research and development. This is not the traditional sort of data centre set up where we're leasing racks. We're really selling high added value services as GPU, as compute GPU as a service and we're extremely be proud to do this. Look, it's not the first time that we do innovates. We were the first telco operator to launch 5G in 2018. We were the first Azure partner and this really plays to our strengths of being a reliable partner, a highly a highly innovative partner and also putting security at the forefront of all our processes. And a testament to that is NVIDIA choosing us as a partner. I wanted to ask you about security specifically because this has been an issue of debate in the region. It's very clear that the United States is concerned that advanced chips from NVIDIA may fall into the wrong hands and end up in China. This is something that the US has been probing for some time now. So how does this deal comply with current US export restrictions? And what is the overall impact of those restrictions on the company, the country and the region? How are you reading the situation as a telecom operator dealing with very stringent regulation is business as usual. We are we've been used to deal with regulators, government authorities, whether they're local or international. This is really at the core of being a telco operator where vital critical infrastructure provider that provides connectivity that handles extreme sensitive data. So this is nothing new to us. We are working very closely with the different regulators and with NVIDIA to seek all the required approvals and to provide all the guarantees required in that effect. We have a very strong reputation as a redo to put a compliance and security at the forefront of every single of our processes. Aziz, do you think these US export restrictions are stifling technology innovation in the Middle East? Not in the Middle East like the Middle East is one of the fastest growing region in terms of cloud adoption. We're growing nearly 30% per year. And you know a testament to this is we've committed as a redo to invest up to a billion dollar in our data centre platforms. This includes, of course, the AR part. The Middle East has been a sector, an area of innovation and an area of growth in these new technologies for the past five to 10 years, and we're just accelerating this and really wants to be a key enabler to that growth. How do you get there, though, without Nvidia's most advanced, most sophisticated chips, though? Surely this is a barrier for you, no. So as an MCP redo will get every latest model of chips to services clients that when they're readily available. So every time NVIDIA will launch a new chipset and we'll make it available, we will have it as a priority. So I disagree with your statement. We we will have one, this product launches the latest generation of chips which are actually available at that point of time. OK, So what's the long term vision for integrating Nvidia's technology and boosting AI infrastructure across the MENA region? Obviously this is a really significant new partnership. So how do you see it growing from here? Look, we we've positioned a redo to migrate from being a traditional Palco company selling just data and minutes to becoming a digital infrastructure company. This started a few years back where we announced the largest Tower Co company in the region in partnership with Zane. We then did a carve out and of our data centre business. We have 26 data centres spread out seven countries. We and the AI part of it is just in addition to this and falls directly into play because a telecom operator for covering the whole region. We hold the whole value chain from on the sea connectivity to landing station to backhaul data centres and active networks. And you need every single of these components to enable our clients to access and leverage fully the power of these new technologies. And once you add the NVIDIA AI stack about this, the power and the growth you can generate is tremendous. Well said. And before I let you go, I have to ask as well, is there a financial element to this partnership? Can you help me understand the terms of this agreement? And how will you measure the ROI for Ardu when it comes to this NVIDIA integration? Look, we're we're two commercial entities, whether NVIDIA or ourselves. So of course there's a financial component to it and we put return to our shareholder as a priority. If you look at our track record in the past few years, you know, Redo has announced record year after year, record year. Last year, we had the best year in terms of history where we baked all our KPIs from top line to profitability. Our net profit has grown nearly 128% in the last three years and this is through the migration from becoming a traditional telco to a digital infrastructure company. So of course, we believe that there's significant growth but also strong profitability attached to this product, right? So what's it worth? Can you tell me? So we've committed, we've committed publicly all for our whole data centre platform to invest up to a billion dollars within the next three to five years. What I can tell you is the demand we're seeing just from the cloud and now adding that layer of AI to it is already outstripping our most optimistic plan. So we'll probably see that investment in the next three to five years.