We offer training and mentorship to entrepreneurs both on and off campus, from scientists and students looking to spin out their inventions into new companies, to Saudi business owners interested in adopting an entrepreneurial approach to business growth.
Starting a business requires more than just good ideas. It takes careful planning and foresight, market knowledge, funding and ongoing support. KAUST helps entrepreneurs at all stages of the process, from ideation to launch to funding and beyond. We also help inventors protect and commercialize their inventions. KAUST is particularly interested in supporting new ventures that are aligned with the university’s research activities and that will have local or regional impacts and create jobs.
(1) Management and commercialization of university innovation.
(2) Establishing and managing Makkah Techno Valley (MTV), a Science and Technology Park in UQU.
Thakaa Center is a state-of-the-art facility that aims to contribute to one of the Kingdom’s goals of supporting SMEs and entrepreneurs in order to increase their contribution to GDP. We achieve such objective through unlocking the potential of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence to support entrepreneurs build cutting edge prototypes and SMEs become more data-driven. Thakaa Center is managed and operated by Mozn
Innovative Center provides several services to improve production capabilities for small and med manufactures; and to work in collaboration with them to build supplier chains that support big companies and other government sectors. In addition, Innovative Centers works to build a qualified team that allocated to provide predefined services for small and med companies to improve their capabilities. This team visits those companies and analyze and evaluate their procedures and process to improve them.
IKEA Forward is the first corporate startup accelerator in MENA. The program will incubate startups through a 4-month program, those startups will get a unique chance to work closely together with IKEA and to accelerate their startup. The program will end with a Demo Day where the startups showcase their startup and progress to IKEA, press, and external investors.
AstroLabs Riyadh is a fully stocked office with fast wifi and free printing, supplies, coffee, and snacks to fuel your team. The space is built for entrepreneurs with open plan, bookable meeting rooms, casual cafe, training/events venue, a heads-down “coding cave,” device lab to test your apps, and even a shower so that you can practically live here.
