Excited to announce SINAI's partnership with VCM

I'm super excited to announce that SINAI and the Regional Voluntary Carbon Market Company (VCM) have signed a strategic partnership to launch Saudi Arabia's first AI-powered enterprise decarbonization platform.

Founded in 2022 by the Public Investment Fund (PIF) and Saudi Tadawul Group, VCM is building the carbon market ecosystem for the region. VCM:

Runs an investment fund for climate mitigation projects
Operates an exchange for voluntary carbon credit trading
Provides advisory services to help organizations build their decarbonization strategies

Together we're giving companies in the Kingdom a way to measure their Scope 1-3 emissions, build transition plans aligned with Saudi Arabia's 2060 net-zero target and meet ESG reporting standards (all hosted on secure infrastructure in Saudi Arabia).

So why does this one mean so much to me?

This partnership has been about a year in the making - lots of calls across time zones (Portland and Riyadh are 10+ hours apart!), plenty of whiteboard sessions and a trip to Riyadh to visit the VCM team in person.

Have you ever read everything you can about a market, then landed there and realized how much you didn't know? That was Riyadh for me.

Sitting down with the VCM team, I could feel the ambition of the Kingdom. Vision 2030 and the 2060 net-zero goal aren't just slogans on a slide - they show up in every conversation, in the pace of new projects and in how seriously companies are taking the work to measure and reduce their emissions. It is a huge opportunity for SINAI to grow in the region and help organizations on their sustainability journey.

The trip also showed me why working with a local/regional partner is so important. No company (no matter how good the technology) walks into a new region and wins on its own. Every time I think back on Riyadh, I'm reminded of 3 things a great local partner brings:

Expertise - VCM knows the Saudi regulatory landscape, the national climate targets and what local companies actually need to meet them.
Support - A team on the ground to lean on, guide customers and help them succeed. Something we could never replicate from Portland.
Relationships - Trusted connections across the public and private sectors, built over years. No amount of cold outreach can replace that.

SINAI brings the technology. VCM brings the context, credibility and connections. Together we can deliver something neither of us could alone.

If there's one thing this past year reinforced for me, it's this: partnerships are built over relationships. Not contracts. Not slide decks. Not a single meeting. They're built over coffee, long conversations, follow-up calls and the trust that comes from showing up in person. Signing the agreement is the easy part - the relationship is what makes it work.