Diriyah Company Unveils ‘Diriyah House' in London to Expand Global Reach
Diriyah Company announced the launch of "Diriyah House" in London's One Hyde Park in Knightsbridge, marking a strategic move to strengthen its global presence and attract international investment, reported the Saudi Press Agency on Wednesday.
Diriyah House serves as a marketing platform designed to deliver immersive experiences for investors and stakeholders interested in Diriyah, a cultural destination in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, projected to welcome more than 50 million visits annually by 2030.
The house features a marketing suite showcasing the Diriyah Masterplan and offers interactive content that enables visitors to explore the vision and components of the masterplan in a modern and engaging format aligned with global investor expectations.
Commenting on the occasion, Diriyah Company Group CEO Jerry Inzerillo said: 'We are thrilled to launch the Diriyah House in the heart of London, where our team will present Diriyah's story on a global stage through a distinctive experience worthy of its heritage.'
'This step advances our international reach as we build one of the world's most iconic destinations rooted in the Kingdom's history, culture, and identity.'
Diriyah House is set to officially open in early July 2025 in partnership with Sotheby's International Realty, which will operate the facility.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Al Arabiya
8 hours ago
- Al Arabiya
The success of a key NATO summit is in doubt after Spain rejects a big hike in defense spending
The success of a key NATO summit hung in the balance on Friday after Spain announced that it cannot raise the billions of dollars needed to meet a new defense investment pledge demanded by US President Donald Trump. Trump and his NATO counterparts are meeting for two days in the Netherlands starting next Tuesday. He insists that US allies should commit to spending at least 5 percent of gross domestic product, but that requires investment at an unprecedented scale. Trump has cast doubt over whether the US would defend allies that spend too little. Setting the spending goal would be a historic decision. It would see all 32 countries invest the same amount in defense for the first time. Only last week NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte expressed confidence that they would endorse it. But in a letter to Rutte on Thursday, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez wrote that committing to a 5 percent target would not only be unreasonable but also counterproductive. 'It would move Spain away from optimal spending and it would hinder the (European Union's) ongoing efforts to strengthen its security and defense ecosystem,' Sánchez wrote in the letter seen by The Associated Press. Spain is not entirely alone. Belgium, Canada, France, and Italy would also struggle to hike security spending by billions of dollars, but Spain is the only country to officially announce its intentions, making it hard to row back from such a public decision. Beyond his economic challenges, Sánchez has other problems. He relies on small parties to govern, and corruption scandals have ensnared his inner circle and family members. He's under growing pressure to call an early election. In response to the letter, Rutte's office said only that 'discussions among allies on a new defense investment plan are ongoing.' NATO's top civilian official had been due to table a new proposal on Friday to try to break the deadlock. The US and French envoys had also been due to update reporters about the latest developments ahead of the summit but postponed their briefings. Rutte and many European allies are desperate to resolve the problem by Tuesday so that Trump does not derail the summit as he did during his first term at NATO headquarters in 2018. After Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, NATO allies agreed that 2 percent of GDP should be the minimum they spend on their military budgets. But NATO's new plans for defending its own territory against outside attack require investment of at least 3 percent. Spain agreed to those plans in 2023. The 5 percent goal is made up of two parts. The allies would agree to hike pure defense spending to 3.5 percent of GDP. A further 1.5 percent would go to upgrade roads, bridges, ports, and airfields so that armies can better deploy and to prepare societies for future attacks. Mathematically, 3.5 plus 1.5 equals Trump's 5 percent. But a lot is hiding behind the figures, and details of what kinds of things can be included remain cloudy. Countries closest to Russia–Belarus and Ukraine–have all agreed to the target, as well as nearby Germany, Norway, Sweden, and the Netherlands, which is hosting the June 24–25 summit. The Netherlands estimates that NATO's defense plans would force it to dedicate at least 3.5 percent to core defense spending. That means finding an additional 16 billion to 19 billion euros (18 billion to 22 billion). Supplying arms and ammunition to Ukraine, which Spain does, will also be included as core defense spending. NATO estimates that the US spent around 3.2 percent of GDP on defense last year. The additional 1.5 percent spending basket is murkier. Rutte and many members argue that infrastructure used to deploy armies to the front must be included, as well as building up defense industries and preparing citizens for possible attacks. 'If a tank is not able to cross a bridge. If our societies are not prepared in case war breaks out for a whole of society approach. If we are not able to really develop the defense industrial base, then the 3.5 percent is great, but you cannot really defend yourselves,' Rutte said this month. Spain wanted climate change spending included, but that proposal was rejected. Cyber-security and counter-hybrid warfare investment should also make the cut. Yet with all the conjecture about what might be included, it's difficult to see how Rutte arrived at this 1.5 percent figure. It's not enough to agree to spend more money. Many allies haven't yet hit the 2 percent target, although most will this year, and they had a decade to get there. So an incentive is required. The date of 2032 has been floated as a deadline. That's far shorter than previous NATO targets, but military planners estimate that Russian forces could be capable of launching an attack on an ally within 5–10 years. The US insists that it cannot be an open-ended pledge and that a decade is too long. Still, Italy says it wants 10 years to hit the 5 percent target. Another issue is how fast spending should be ramped up. 'I have a cunning plan for that,' Rutte said. He wants the allies to submit annual plans that lay out how much they intend to increase spending by. For Europe, Russia's war on Ukraine poses an existential threat. A major rise in sabotage, cyberattacks, and GPS jamming incidents is blamed on Moscow. European leaders are girding their citizens for the possibility of more. The United States also insists that China poses a threat. But for European people to back a hike in national defense spending, their governments require acknowledgment that the Kremlin remains NATO's biggest security challenge. The billions required for security will be raised by taxes, going into debt, or shuffling money from other budgets. But it won't be easy for many, as Spain has shown. On top of that, Trump has made things economically tougher by launching a global tariff war–ostensibly for US national security reasons–something America's allies find hard to fathom.
Arab News
9 hours ago
- Arab News
BBC threatens legal action against AI startup Perplexity over content scraping
LONDON: The BBC has threatened legal action against Perplexity, accusing the AI startup of training its 'default AI model' using BBC content, the Financial Times reported on Friday, making the British broadcaster the latest news organisation to accuse the AI firm of content scraping. The BBC may seek an injunction unless Perplexity stops scraping its content, deletes existing copies used to train its AI systems, and submits 'a proposal for financial compensation' for the alleged misuse of its intellectual property, FT said, citing a letter sent to Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas. The broadcaster confirmed the FT report on Friday. Perplexity has faced accusations from media organizations, including Forbes and Wired, for plagiarizing their content but has since launched a revenue-sharing program to address publisher concerns. Last October, the New York Times sent it a 'cease and desist' notice, demanding the firm stop using the newspaper's content for generative AI purposes. Since the introduction of ChatGPT, publishers have raised alarms about chatbots that comb the internet to find information and create paragraph summaries for users. The BBC said that parts of its content had been reproduced verbatim by Perplexity and that links to the BBC website have appeared in search results, according to the FT report. Perplexity called the BBC's claims 'manipulative and opportunistic' in a statement to Reuters, adding that the broadcaster had 'a fundamental misunderstanding of technology, the internet and intellectual property law.' Perplexity provides information by searching the internet, similar to ChatGPT and Google's Gemini, and is backed by (AMZN.O) founder Jeff Bezos, AI giant Nvidia (NVDA.O), and Japan's SoftBank Group (9984.T). The startup is in advanced talks to raise $500 million in a funding round that would value it at $14 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported last month.
Al Arabiya
10 hours ago
- Al Arabiya
Britain signs $2.7 bln investment partnership deal with Bahrain
Britain said on Friday that it signed a new partnership with Bahrain that will see 2 billion pounds ($2.69 billion) of investment into financial services, clean energy, manufacturing and technology. 'This 2 billion pounds commitment is yet another major vote of confidence in the UK economy, backing the key growth sectors we've identified in our upcoming modern Industrial Strategy,' business minister Jonathan Reynolds said in a statement. ($1 = 0.7424 pounds)
