New Local Tech Partnership to Cut UAE Reliance on Foreign AI Supply Chains

Kerno and SAAL.ai signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Friday, 9 October, at the AI Everything 2026 summit in Dubai to co-develop a "Sovereign AI-in-a-Box" solution. The agreement establishes a partnership to manufacture and deploy integrated enterprise AI infrastructure entirely within the UAE, aimed at reducing reliance on foreign technology supply chains. The MoU was signed by Evgeny Ostrovskiy, Chief Revenue Officer and Co-Founder of Kerno, and Vikraman Poduval, Chief Executive Officer of SAAL.ai. The resulting product combines UAE-manufactured enterprise-grade hardware with locally developed data platforms and Agentic AI solutions. According to the companies, the architecture includes enterprise compute, operating environments, containerisation, and tailored AI models in a single deployment-ready unit. Integrated Hardware and Software Stack Under the partnership, Kerno provides the physical infrastructure layer, which is engineered and stress-tested in the UAE. SAAL.ai supplies the intelligence layer, focusing on decision intelligence and digital transformation for public and private sectors. The collaboration is designed to allow organisations to retain complete ownership of their data and models, mitigating risks associated with offshore support or external platforms. "True sovereignty demands ownership of the entire stack, from silicon to software," said Ostrovskiy during the signing. Poduval added that the model allows organisations to scale AI "without…