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Saudi-Based Mozn Uses AI To Detect Money Laundering & Fraud

The company combats a wide range of financial crimes using pattern recognition and advanced algorithms.

Published

3 years ago

May 12, 2023

Nour Nasir

Mozn

Saudi Arabia’s Mozn, an AI platform founded by Dr. Mohammed Alhussein, uses advanced artificial intelligence algorithms to detect and prevent financial crimes and increase compliance.

The company’s advanced platform is known as FOCAL. It can sift through masses of financial data using pattern recognition and other advanced techniques to spot fraud and money laundering in real time.

Dr. Alhussein developed the FOCAL platform by studying anti-money-laundering and anti-terrorism legislation and compliance and quickly realized that traditional (often manual) checks and safeguards were too slow to act.

Mozn’s AI technology uses name-matching algorithms uniquely optimized for the Arabic language and reconciles its findings against 1,300 international and regional sanctions. Meanwhile, the system’s anti-fraud functionality detects suspicious patterns by confirming payee identities against the records of destination accounts — a process that is said to reduce investigation times by up to 95%.

Also Read: A Guide To Digital Payment Methods In The Middle East

Although the platform was launched in Saudi Arabia, CEO Dr. Mohammed Alhussein recently announced plans to expand into the UAE, noting that the company’s long-term goal would be to develop operations further across the GCC. “The UAE has been making significant strides in enhancing its AML compliance and combating financial fraud, and Mozn entering UAE market will help accelerate these efforts,” Alhussein stated in a press release. “We are excited to begin this next chapter in Mozn’s growth journey as we enter the broader GCC market through our UAE office”.

Related Topics:Artificial Intelligence FinTech Saudi Arabia

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Microsoft Plans $10 Billion-Plus Gulf Expansion Despite Iran Conflict

Security is shaping Microsoft’s approach, from resilience work with governments to what it will say about how the money splits by country.

Published

4 days ago

September 24, 2026

Nour Nasir

Microsoft

Microsoft is planning more than $10 billion of investment across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait through 2030, Vice Chair and President Brad Smith told Reuters, calling the spending schedule aggressive. The Iranian conflict that began on February 28 has not persuaded the company to scale back.

“We’re sustaining all the investments we planned to make before this conflict started, and we are in fact adding to them,” Smith said. The $10 billion-plus total does not, however, show how large those additions are.

The investment, which Smith described as part of Microsoft’s continued infrastructure expansion, is aimed at cloud and AI infrastructure and at the company’s growing regional operations. Microsoft also intends to put more than $400 million into subsea and terrestrial connectivity across the Middle East by 2030.

The spending fits the region’s own ambitions too. Gulf governments have been investing heavily in AI infrastructure as part of a push to diversify their economies beyond oil and gas and turn themselves into global technology hubs. Major cloud and AI providers have been drawn in part by the land and relatively low-cost energy on offer.

Microsoft is widening its partnerships with regional AI companies, though not on identical terms. In 2024, it invested $1.5 billion in Abu Dhabi-based G42 for a minority stake, and Smith currently sits on G42’s board. Saudi Arabia’s Humain and Qatar’s Qai are working with Microsoft on selected priority areas, but Smith said the company does not plan to make capital investments in either.

Also Read: Egypt’s Mobile Wallets Are Booming, But Cash Still Has Power

The conflict has added another strand to Microsoft’s work in the region. Since it began, Smith said, the company has supported regional partners with digital resilience assessments, and it is now working with Gulf countries through a digital resilience initiative focused on preparedness and the protection of critical data.

So far, the company has given no country-by-country breakdown of the investment, citing security among other factors. So while the headline figure is public, how Microsoft divides the spending among the four countries is not.