By Abeer Abdalla, Managing Editor, The Saudi Times
Vishal Parmar could have run his three shows in any city. He brought all of them to Riyadh at once, and filled the room with the people who run the Kingdom’s institutions.
The founder of the Global AI Show, the Global Blockchain Show, and the Global Games Show co-located all three in Saudi Arabia and named The Saudi Times strategic media partner, a role he describes as connecting ideas with decision-makers and creating visibility for the organizations driving transformation. The choice of city was a read on the market, not a venue booking.
“We did not choose Riyadh simply as a destination,” Parmar says. “We chose it because it is where policy, capital, talent, and technology are converging at an unprecedented pace.”
Founded in 2013, his Dubai-based VAP Group launched the AI and blockchain shows in 2023 and added the games show in 2024, building alongside them the media platforms Times of AI, Times of Blockchain, and Times of Games. He describes himself as an angel investor and a CEO focused on technology and services. The throughline is convening: gathering an industry in a room and making the room matter.
What he is seeing in the Kingdom
AI, blockchain, and gaming now shape the same digital economy, Parmar argues, and running them separately wastes the overlap. Bringing them together, he says, “creates conversations and partnerships that would not happen in silos.” Dubai and Abu Dhabi laid the foundation for the format. Riyadh is where he thinks it accelerates.
“A few years ago, people came to Saudi Arabia to present an idea. Today they unite to build.” – Vishal Parmar
The roster supports the instinct behind that answer. The names on the program are not vendors studying an emerging opportunity. They are the people accountable for what the Kingdom builds next.
The builders of the physical Kingdom
Saudi Arabia’s largest capital programs sent the executives who actually run their technology. Nate Busa, Director of AI and Automation at NEOM, works on distributed AI at scale, from inference infrastructure and large language model platforms to production assistants wired into enterprise systems. Ulysses Demos arrived as Chief Global Data Officer at Red Sea Global, where data governance and smart-city architecture sit in the same portfolio. Abdulaziz Saud Hamad Alowais leads artificial intelligence and data at King Salman International Airport, a brief that runs from digital identity to what a passenger experiences at a gate.
Aviation was represented on both sides of the fleet. Dr. Ibraheem Sheerah, Chief Transformation Officer at Saudi Arabian Airlines Holding, carries the transformation agenda across Saudia Air Transport, flyadeal, Saudia Technic, Saudia Cargo, SAL, Saudia Ground Services, and the Prince Sultan Aviation Academy. Sourav Sinha, Chief Information Officer at flynas, came with 34 years in aviation technology and previous CIO tenures at Qatar Airways Group, IndiGo, and Oman Air.
The state, seated as a practitioner
The government presence was operational rather than ceremonial. Nezar Al Turki, Chief Information Officer at the Ministry of National Guard and a former brigadier general, has spent three decades modernizing systems inside the Kingdom’s security establishment. Dr. Mohammed Nasser Alshahrani, Executive Advisor to the Minister at the Council of Economic and Development Affairs, works on the statistical machinery underneath national policy, turning administrative data into indicators a minister can decide on.
Health brought its own bench. Eng. Nsaaim Alotaibi directs the artificial intelligence department at SEHA Virtual Hospital under the Ministry of Health, alongside Eng. Laila AlSalehi, who runs virtual health services there, and Hamdan Alshammari, its digital enablement director. Dr. Abdullah Khamis, Chief Information Officer at the Center for National Health Insurance, holds a doctorate in artificial intelligence from KAUST. Dr. Sufana AlMashhadi, Innovation Director at the Saudi National Institute of Health, came through a neuroscience PhD at Sheffield and a postdoctoral fellowship at MIT.
Where the money sits
The financial sector sent risk and technology leadership rather than marketing. Abdulaziz Al-Ghufaili, Chief Technology Officer at Bank Albilad, argues for what he calls Culture-as-Code, the position that sovereign systems should be authored around the Kingdom’s own language and values rather than adopted wholesale. Abdulrahman Alonaizan, Chief Business Continuity Officer at Arab National Bank, chairs the Central Bank’s business continuity committee. Atiq Bajwa oversees enterprise risk at Sulaiman Alrajhi Holding, and Abdullah Alshargi, Chief Strategy and Transformation Officer at Tawuniya, has run the insurer’s digital program alongside earlier work on the national health insurance exchange.
Capital came as well. Amal Dokhan, Managing Partner at 500 Global in MENA, sat on the program with Halah Al-Jubeir, Managing Director for Saudi Arabia and MENAP at Antler, and Mohammed Alzubi, Founder and Managing Partner of Nama Ventures, whose record runs past 110 investments. Michael Lints joined as Founding Partner for MENA at Golden Gate Ventures, and Ali Abussaud, Founder and Chief Executive of HALA Capital, brought the view from a CMA-regulated alternatives manager.
The vendors came as suppliers, not tutors
The global technology names on the program arrived into a market that sets its own terms. Ibrahim Alseghayr runs Salesforce in Saudi Arabia as Managing Director, building local capability and partnerships. Talal AlBakr leads Scale AI in the Kingdom after founding SCCC by stc and taking it to scale as a cloud provider. Dr. Moataz BinAli came as founding global chief executive of Magna AI, the Trend Micro and Wistron venture built on NVIDIA technology and pitched squarely at sovereign AI. Ian Mahoney, Chief Technology Officer at webook.com, represented the consumer end of the same economy.
Around them sat the operators of the industrial and services base: Fady Sleiman, Group Chief Information and Digital Officer at AlBawani Holding and named top CIO at the CIO50 Middle East awards in 2024; Sami Sarhan, Chief Advisor at the National Industrial Development Center, who founded the Fourth Industrial Revolution center at KAUST; Manus Ward, Director of Operations at KAUST’s National Transformation Institute; Alanood Alothaimeen, Executive Director of Strategy at the Saudi Sports for All Federation; and Maya Ayoub, founder of District Twelve and Saudi Arabia country director for Women in Tech Global.
Why the operators in the room matter
That mix is what Parmar is building around. “When the audience is made up of operators rather than vendors, the questions get sharper,” he says. “They are not asking whether to adopt the technology anymore.”
The agendas reflected it. The AI panels did not argue for adoption; that argument is settled here. They debated governance, accountability, and the environmental cost of compute, the questions you reach only once deployment is assumed. The blockchain track was anchored by a Saudi academic running a Web3 lab and by the Web3 Alliance of Saudi Arabia. The gaming track worked through talent pipelines, community ownership, and how to make ecosystems investable.
When buyers and their regulators are in the room, the conversation turns operational.
The forecast
Convening power is earned, and it is fragile. It holds only as long as the execution behind it holds, as long as the projects deliver and the talent pipeline keeps filling. What Parmar has assembled proves intent and momentum. It does not prove outcomes, and he would be the first to say the work is in the follow-through.
He has already started building for the stage after this one. VAP Ventures launched at the event, moving the group past convening and into backing companies. “Our ambition goes far beyond hosting successful events,” Parmar says.
The tell comes in February. The series returns to Riyadh on the second and third, and if it comes back with a thicker Saudi corporate presence and a longer list of deals struck on the sidelines, convening will have matured into something that compounds. For now, the man who brought three industries to Riyadh has made his case by filling the room. The rest is on the Kingdom, and on him, to deliver.
