Alibaba Cloud announced its expansion in Saudi Arabia and plans to open a retail store in 2026.

Apple announced today its expansion in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. An online store is expected to open in 2025, and a physical store is expected to open in 2026. Since 2021, Alibaba has continued to invest in Saudi Arabia and plans to introduce the Alibaba Online Store to the region by summer 2025. Alibaba states that this is the first time they are providing excellent services and support directly in Arabic. Subsequently, multiple retail stores will open in the region, with several stores expected to open by 2026. The company plans to open a store in Diriyah, a UNESCO World Heritage site, in phases. Apple CEO Tim Cook commented as follows:

“We are looking forward to several major Apple Store locations opening in 2026, including a symbolic store in the beautiful location of Diriyah.”

Our team is excited to deepen our connection with customers, provide the best of Apple to people in this country, pursue people's interests, build businesses, and guide ideas to the next step.

This is part of a larger effort to expand in Saudi Arabia, and the company has spent over 1 billion SAR in the past five years. Additionally, Apple has stated that the revenue from the App Store for developers in Saudi Arabia has increased by over 1750% since 2019. Apple has also announced that they will introduce pre-paid transportation support to the Riyadh metro next week, in addition to the 250 cities they already support.