Kerno and SAAL.ai have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to jointly develop and deploy a UAE-built AI solution. The move aims to strengthen the country's AI sovereignty and industrial capabilities.
The companies signed the agreement at AI Everything 2026 on October 9, 2026. They disclosed their plans to engineer, manufacture, and support the integrated Sovereign AI-in-a-Box solution entirely in the UAE. This will enable governments and enterprises to maintain control over their technology infrastructure.
Evgeny Ostrovskiy, Chief Revenue Officer and Co-Founder of Kerno, and Vikraman Poduval, Chief Executive Officer of SAAL.ai, signed the MoU.
The Sovereign AI-in-a-Box platform combines enterprise computing, an operating environment, containerization, and tailored AI models into a single, deployment-ready architecture.
Kerno, a UAE-based manufacturer of enterprise-grade IT infrastructure, will provide the hardware foundation. It engineers, manufactures, stress-tests, and supports its infrastructure in-country.
SAAL.ai, which develops data platform and agentic AI solutions for government and enterprise clients, will provide the intelligence layer. Its specialized AI solutions are designed to improve operational efficiency, decision-making and digital transformation across critical public and private sectors.
The companies said the solution will offer organizations a streamlined path from data preparation to agentic AI at optimal cost. Customers will retain complete ownership and control of their data, models and infrastructure.
The platform is also designed to support complex AI workloads without reliance on foreign supply chains, offshore support or external platforms.
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The collaboration seeks to move the UAE from adopting technology to building it locally. Combining domestic hardware manufacturing with AI development is expected to keep economic value in the country, strengthen advanced manufacturing, and secure critical supply chains.
The partnership will also support Emirati talent development across hardware engineering, manufacturing, AI development, and deployment.
"As AI becomes central to national security and critical infrastructure, true sovereignty demands ownership of the entire stack, from silicon to software," Ostrovskiy said.
Poduval said AI sovereignty is about "ownership, control and the freedom to innovate", adding that the partnership would help organizations adopt and scale AI without surrendering control of their technology.
The alliance supports the UAE's national agenda to lead the global digital economy through resilient, homegrown infrastructure.