When Hassan Jameel attended the Saudi-U.S. Investment Forum in Riyadh, he left with a signed memorandum of understanding with Uber’s CEO Dara Khosrowshahi — one of the more tangible results of a forum designed to connect American technology with Saudi ambition.
The Uber deal commits the two companies to building a next-generation fleet operations platform covering both conventional ride-hailing and autonomous vehicle deployment across Saudi Arabia. The stated target is 30,000 earning opportunities for Saudi nationals, directly aligned with Vision 2030’s goal of economic diversification and local employment growth.
Abdul Latif Jameel brings to that partnership something Uber cannot replicate quickly: seven decades of on-the-ground operational experience in the Kingdom. The company has run automotive distribution, aftersales services, real estate and financial services in Saudi Arabia since 1955. It knows the terrain, the regulations, the customer base, and the infrastructure gaps.
Jameel has been direct about what this moment requires of companies like his. Saudi Arabia’s urban transformation is not a distant scenario — it is already underway. Giga-projects, new city development, and a rapidly urbanizing population are creating demand for transport infrastructure that did not exist a decade ago. The companies that will benefit are those that move now, not those that wait for the market to fully form.
A separate memorandum of understanding with Joby Aviation, signed around the same period, adds another dimension. Up to 200 Joby electric aircraft, valued at approximately $1 billion, could be delivered to Saudi Arabia over the coming years, with services covering air taxi operations, maintenance, repair and pilot training. Joby plans to carry its first passengers in Dubai in 2026.
“Saudi Arabia is transitioning toward a new era of mobility — one that is on-demand, shared, connected, and sustainable,” Jameel said. “eVTOL is an exciting and important component of this.”
Embedded within all of this is an operating culture that Hassan Jameel traces back to Toyota. You cannot build a fleet operations platform or a national air taxi network from a boardroom. You have to understand the work at the level where it actually happens.
That culture shows up at every scale. An account of how Abdul Latif Jameel Motors operates at the frontline — a stock yard driver identifying a lane reassignment that cut his team’s daily workload by hours — captures the same logic that governs the company’s biggest strategic moves: find the waste, remove it, and let the people closest to the problem lead the way.