Abdullah Alshamrani

General Manager, Digital Entrepreneurship Center

Abdullah Alshamrani is general manager of the Digital Entrepreneurship Center (CODE) at Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, where he works to accelerate the growth of the Kingdom's digital entrepreneurship ecosystem. CODE is one of the ministry's programmes and serves as an integrated destination for entrepreneurs, combining co-working spaces, business services and incubation and acceleration programmes in a single environment, with the aim of building innovative technology companies able to grow, compete and endure. Its programmes include Tech Founders, which prepares promising Saudi technology companies to expand globally through local capability building and immersion in leading international startup ecosystems; an incubation programme offering equipped workspaces from launch to scale; and CODE NINE 66, a game development track that combines game jams with incubation to help developers and designers turn ideas into commercially launchable games and found their own studios. The centre's partners include ROSHN, King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre, Tuwaiq Academy and Replit.