العربية

The founder

Ziyad Al-Qahtani زياد القحطاني

Founder & CEO of Majara

Full name: Ziyad Mohammed Al-Qahtani

Saudi entrepreneur and data scientist; founder and CEO of Majara.

Ziyad Al-Qahtani in Saudi dress, arms crossed

Biography

Ziyad Al-Qahtani is a young Saudi entrepreneur and an AI researcher at the Saudi Data and AI Authority (SDAIA). He founded Majara in Riyadh in 2021 and leads it as CEO. He started building companies as a computer science student at King Saud University.

Majara's portfolio and track record now span nine ventures across AI, PropTech, real estate, education, e-commerce and health, including two exits: Jahez Academy and Tapputi Perfume. He is also the founder and CEO of Wakil, a Saudi PropTech platform, sits on several boards, and is a member of the Saudi Chinese Business Council.

Before and alongside Majara, Ziyad worked in Saudi Arabia's national data and AI institutions: as a data scientist at the Saudi Data and AI Authority (SDAIA), as innovation manager at the General Authority for Statistics (GASTAT), and as principal data scientist and then acting data science manager at the National Labor Observatory. That background is why AI sits at the core of every company Majara builds.

From Majara’s portfolio and track record

Majara's portfolio includes Wukala, an AI agents platform for high-governance organizations; Wakil, a PropTech SaaS platform for real estate brokers in Saudi Arabia; Mashraq Real Estate Co., a brokerage and real estate services company; Lamarya Real Estate Development; and e-commerce brands including Nagsha. Its exits include Jahez Academy, an exam-prep app for the Qudurat and Tahsili tests, and Tapputi Perfume. Its founding team also built Mawidy, a nonprofit health app that reached 500 medical providers during COVID-19.

Wukala

Artificial intelligence

AI agents platform for high-governance organizations.

AR · EN Arabic and English as equals, right-to-left from day one

Wakil

PropTech

Saudi PropTech SaaS: the office website, CRM and property management in one place.

3 modules in one platform: website, CRM, property management

Mashraq Real Estate Co.

Real estate brokerage & services

Brokerage, property management and value-add investing in north Riyadh.

REGA licensed for brokerage and property management

Lamarya Real Estate Development

Real estate development

Homes in the heart of Riyadh with Salmani design and smart living.

18/18 units sold in Lamarya Residence I

Jahez Academy

EdTech

Exam prep for the Qudurat and Tahsili tests, exited by Majara.

15,000+ practice questions

Mawidy

Digital health

Nonprofit health app that reached 500 medical providers during COVID-19.

500 medical providers reached during COVID-19 via the Sanad initiative

Career

  1. 2021 –

    Founder & CEO

    Majara

    Saudi holding company that helps found and build ventures alongside their founders.

  2. 2023 – 2025

    Principal Data Scientist, then Acting Data Science Manager

    National Labor Observatory

    Led a team of 6–10 and built GPTNLO in 2023, an early LLM system for searching labor policies and reports.

  3. 2022 – 2023

    Innovation Manager

    General Authority for Statistics (GASTAT)

    Automated the Household Income and Expenditure Survey with OCR and NER, processing 100,000 surveys.

  4. 2020 – 2022

    Data Scientist, then Senior Data Scientist

    Saudi Data and AI Authority (SDAIA)

    At the National Information Center, and as a researcher at the National Center for AI (2021).

  5. 2018 – 2020

    Co-founder

    Software Valley

    Helped build several services, and helped build and strengthen 8 organizations, across the public and private sectors.

Education

King Saud University, BSc in Computer Science / Information Systems, second-class honors (2016–2019)

Research

  • CareerRecEngineering, Technology & Applied Science Research (ETASR), 2020
  • Unsupervised Learning for Radar Classification of Small ObjectsIEEE Radar Conference (RadarConf), 2021

Community and speaking

  • Member of the Saudi Chinese Business Council since 2024
  • Spoke at UN Arabic Language Day on Arabic natural language processing
  • Instructor at Bayan Data School and mentor at Riyadh Data Geeks
  • Built a 100-hour data science course sponsored by Dell EMC

Official profiles