Two UAE companies, Kerno and SAAL.ai, signed a memorandum of understanding at AI Everything 2026 to develop an integrated ai appliance "engineered, manufactured and supported entirely in the UAE". It was signed by Evgeny Ostrovskiy of Kerno and Vikraman Poduval, chief executive of SAAL.ai. No financial terms were given.
At the same event, Solutions+ and Tahaluf signed an agreement on Arabic-first sovereign agentic ai.
Why it matters
This is an agreement to co-develop, not a product on sale. Still, it's a concrete case of sovereign ai meaning hardware that is built and supported at home.
sources
researched and written by aida