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Echelon, a Riyadh-based AI company founded by Prince Khalid Bin Bader Al Saud, has outlined its business and expansion plans after roughly ten months of development, naming East40, Raed Ventures, Avra and Ben Horowitz among its early backers.
The company works with technology suppliers and the enterprises and governments buying their products, helping select, adapt and deploy AI inside organisations. Its initial focus is Saudi, with ambitions to expand across the region and eventually further afield. The founder’s announcement didn’t disclose how much funding Echelon has raised or its valuation.
The premise behind Echelon is that organisations can buy AI more easily than they can put it to use. Someone still has to connect it to their existing systems, work out where it’s useful and keep it running.
Echelon plans to take responsibility for that work through a small number of substantial, long-term engagements. These could take the form of commercial partnerships, joint ventures or businesses built for a particular opportunity, with Echelon committing its own capital, people and resources.
Khalid founded East40 with members of his family to invest in sectors they see as important to The Kingdom’s future. He also co-founded ClearGrid, the AI debt-collection company, and lists roles as a venture partner at RAED Ventures and an adviser to Andreessen Horowitz on his LinkedIn profile.
Echelon’s commercial division is led by Omar Saleh, a former head of Microsoft’s Saudi enterprise business. It’s already managing deployments, with partners including industrial software provider IFS and cybersecurity company Rubrik.
The company plans to launch Frontier, an engineering division, this quarter. Its teams will work inside customer organisations, adapting partners’ technology and building applications. The approach resembles that of Khsola Ventures-backed US enterprise AI company Distyl, which embeds engineers with clients to develop and operate AI systems.
A partnership signed with Applied Intuition in September extends Echelon’s work into physical AI for ports, mining and trucking. Both companies plan to develop Saudi engineering talent, while Echelon will open a training institute this quarter, initially focused on physical AI. A defence division is scheduled to follow in early 2027.
The investment expands Avra’s Saudi portfolio, which includes Lean Technologies, Manzil and Hala. The US venture firm was co-founded by Anu Hariharan, who previously led Y Combinator’s growth investment arm.
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