Sovereign AI is becoming one of the defining themes reshaping global technology in the Middle East. One company central to that story is Presight, whose platforms now underpin critical infrastructure for governments and enterprises well beyond the UAE. Joining me to unpack the latest Q2 results and discuss what is fuelling the momentum is Roger Tejwani, Senior Director of Investor Relations at Presight. Roger, welcome to the show.
Thank you. Good to be here.
Presight has reported another strong quarter with revenue growing more than 36% year on year. What is driving that momentum?
It was a strong quarter — and it came on the back of over 50% revenue growth in the same period last year. What it signifies is that the twin engines of growth are firing well at Presight: being a trusted AI partner to UAE government and state-owned enterprises, and taking world-class homegrown Emirati technology to global markets. In the UAE in Q2, we had a record order backlog of $2.5 billion. At the federal level, we renewed emergency response platforms and won new awards in public safety and defence. At the Abu Dhabi government level, we renewed our safe city platform and saw new wins with state-owned enterprises including Abu Dhabi Customs and the Integrated Transport Centre. An important takeaway: we maintained our 100% renewal rate on core sovereign deployments. Internationally, we continued to scale across priority markets — progressing multi-year deployments in Kazakhstan, Jordan, Albania, and Africa. International revenue for the first half grew 40% and is now over a quarter of our overall revenue base.
Sovereign AI has become one of the biggest themes in technology. Why is it becoming so important?
Geopolitical developments are reinforcing the importance of digital sovereignty across all markets. Governments and enterprises increasingly view technology as a national resource and data as strategic infrastructure. That means they want more control over infrastructure, compute, data locality, and the economics of consumption — rather than simply relying on third-party frontier models. We are seeing AI deployment shift toward more localised, more secure, and more sovereign-aligned environments. That plays directly to how Presight is built — integrated sovereign AI capabilities across the full value chain, from digital infrastructure to national-scale data platforms and advanced analytics, delivered in a localised end-to-end model purpose-built for mission-critical and highly regulated environments.
Some investors argue Presight remains heavily exposed to government customers. Is that a risk?
Our solutions serve the few that serve the millions — purpose-built for complex mission-critical outcomes at national scale. Improving economic resilience, enhancing quality of life, strengthening critical infrastructure that societies rely on daily. Our focus on government customers is a strategic advantage. It is where critical infrastructure ownership lies, where strategic ambition for large-scale digital transformation lies, and where the resources to support that transformation sit. It also aligns us with long-term national priorities — public safety, financial resilience, energy optimisation — creating long-term predictable demand. And as we grow internationally, our customer concentration is declining as our customer base broadens.
Walk us through how you have succeeded in expanding beyond the UAE and where you are looking next.
We take a very deliberate and disciplined approach — focused on building sustainable presence in priority markets rather than pursuing growth for growth's sake. First, we build and deploy best-in-class national-scale solutions here in the UAE, and they act as reference cases for the world. Our safe city platform in Abu Dhabi has helped Abu Dhabi be consistently voted the safest city globally. Then internationally, we follow a land-and-expand model — providing foundational digital infrastructure, embedding ourselves as part of a national architecture, creating in-country stakeholder value, building regional bases, developing local talent, and partnering with local stakeholders. Kazakhstan is a good example. Over the past two years we have built a regional base there with 50 to 60 people on the ground, helped launch the most powerful supercomputer in Central Asia, opened an R&D lab in Astana, and deployed a smart city platform now being showcased across Central Asia. In Q2, we saw deeper and wider engagements across Kazakhstan, a new engagement in Montenegro, and discussions beginning in neighboring Bosnia. Priority markets going forward are predominantly Central and Southeast Asia, Africa, Europe, and the wider Middle East.
Are your customers moving from AI experimentation into large-scale deployment?
Absolutely, and we saw clear indications of that in Q2. The UAE has a clear mandate for 50% of government services to be powered by generative AI over the next two years. In May, we showcased our AI-Native Workforce Lab at the UAE government retreat, helping representatives from 24 government agencies build, deploy, and govern teams of specialist agents across public services and workflows. Beyond government, we recently announced a partnership with the Abu Dhabi Chamber of Commerce to extend generative AI capabilities to over 100,000 SMEs in Abu Dhabi. And our recent wins with Airbnb and Banco Santander highlight two important shifts — growing demand for sovereign AI amongst large enterprises, and the shift in ROI thinking from AI as a cost optimisation tool to AI as a genuine commercial opportunity and new revenue generator.
Thank you so much, Roger. Congratulations on your results.
It is a pleasure. Thank you for having me.
