Amazon's $10 Billion Bet on the Middle East, Nearly a Decade In

Amazon has put more than $10 billion into the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt since it bought Souq.com in 2017, and the spending has gone well beyond retail.

Fulfillment centers, delivery stations, data centers and cloud capacity account for much of it. The company employs more than 6,000 people across the three countries. Ronaldo Mouchawar, who co-founded Souq.com and now leads Amazon's business across the Middle East, Africa and Turkey, describes the outlay as infrastructure plus the technology and capabilities that let local businesses expand.

Governments set the roadmap

Mouchawar points to Saudi Vision 2030, UAE Vision 2031 and Egypt Vision 2030 as more than background context. Amazon treats the plans as a roadmap, he says, because they overlap with the company's own technology strategy. Close dialogue between business and government, and regulations that have evolved alongside it, are what let Amazon bring in new services.

Quick commerce is the clearest example. Amazon Now launched in the UAE as a global first for the company, and the choice of location was deliberate: the service needs infrastructure and a regulatory environment that tolerates experimentation. Regulatory sandboxes and co-creation with government bodies come up repeatedly in his account. Fintech, he says, advanced quickly in the region for the same reason.

Ripples beyond the warehouse

A fulfillment center is only useful if sellers can reach it. Through Amazon, local businesses get delivery reach, customer feedback and a direct-to-consumer channel they could not easily build alone. Mouchawar says thousands of them now sell across the GCC and place stock in fulfillment centers abroad.

Delivery partners sit in the same chain. Amazon worked with Emirates Post to turn post offices in local communities into micro-fulfillment centers for quick commerce, so each Amazon Now expansion brings new jobs and partner opportunities in the neighborhoods it covers.

AI from search to shopping agents

Amazon has used AI for more than 25 years, starting with the search and recommendation engines that suggested what other customers bought. Generative AI has accelerated the internal cycle from idea to launch, and the company runs AI learning paths, certifications and mentorship for staff.

The operational payoff shows in delivery speed. Amazon's fastest delivery so far took three and a half minutes. Getting there requires knowing where a product sits, how quickly a picker can retrieve it, and what can realistically be promised. With AI handling that planning, Amazon Now reached almost 80 cities worldwide in about a year, an expansion Mouchawar says would otherwise have taken years.

On the customer side, Rufus and Alexa Plus are live in the US. Queries have shifted from “I need a tent” to “I’m going on a camping trip, what do I need?” — and the system answers using the behavior of millions of shoppers, the weather and the destination.

I’m going on a camping trip, what do I need?

Mouchawar expects agents to take on product comparisons, review reading and feature checks. He calls the endpoint “shopping without shopping”: anticipating needs and sitting inside the household routine. His timeline for that shift is two to three years. Asked why he stayed after the 2017 acquisition, he answers in one line. He is a builder by nature.