Databricks is preparing to open an office in Abu Dhabi in February, extending its push into the Middle East less than two years after establishing its regional hub in Riyadh, as the $90 billion data and AI company looks to capture growth across the Gulf.
Richard Wylie, the company’s regional vice president for the Middle East and Africa, said Databricks is investing heavily in the region and plans to hire extensively over the next year to support what he described as rapidly growing business across the area.
The Abu Dhabi move builds on Databricks’ Saudi Arabia operations, which launched with a Riyadh office in December 2024 under general manager Mohammad Alzaubi, a hire who brought prior experience from IBM, SAP and Microsoft. The company has committed up to $300 million toward Saudi Arabia over five years to support AI adoption, data intelligence work and local workforce training.
Databricks has also moved to make its platform more accessible across the region, including launching availability on Google Cloud for customers in Saudi Arabia, part of a broader push to meet regional data residency and infrastructure preferences.
The expansion comes as Abu Dhabi has increasingly positioned itself as a global finance and technology hub, drawing heavy investment in AI and digital infrastructure that has made the emirate an attractive base for data and cloud companies looking to serve Gulf markets.
With a $90 billion valuation from its August funding round behind it, Databricks' deepening Gulf presence reflects the broader wave of global tech companies racing to establish a foothold in the Middle East as governments and enterprises there ramp up AI investment.
