The Saudi AI Startup Beating Silicon Valley at NEOM's $500B Hiring Game

When NEOM — Saudi Arabia's $500 billion megacity project — needed a single AI recruitment platform to coordinate hiring across 170-plus companies, they didn't call Silicon Valley or London. They called KABi, a Riyadh-based startup you've probably never heard of. In this episode, we break down KABi's three-product AI hiring suite: HYRDD for applicant tracking and sourcing, INVIEWS for AI psychometric video assessment, and JOBBIT for SMEs. We look at what the NEOM deployment actually proves — and why it matters that the largest proof-of-concept for GCC AI hiring came from a local startup, not a global vendor. We also touch on the bias risks that come with psychometric video AI, what the $330 million Saudi AI HR market signals for the region, and how Dubai-based OVI takes a fundamentally different approach with audio-only screening — no video, no emotion detection, just conversation. If you're an HR leader watching AI recruitment evolve in the Middle East, this episode gives you the context to understand what's actually being built — and who's building it.