This strategic expansion brings CIQ’s proven HPC and AI expertise, built on decades of Linux kernel innovation and trusted by leading research institutions and enterprises worldwide, to support the Middle East’s rapid digital transformation, including Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030.

Founded by open-source pioneer Gregory Kurtzer, Co-Founder of CentOS and Founder of Rocky Linux, CIQ has established itself as a driving force in the convergence of traditional HPC and modern AI workloads. The company’s portfolio, including Rocky Linux from CIQ and its AI (RLC-AI) and Hardened (RLC-H) variants, Fuzzball, Warewulf Pro, and Ascender Pro, powers performance-intensive computing infrastructure from the operating system up, enabling organisations to deploy secure and scalable digital infrastructure without vendor lock-in.

CIQ's entry into the Gulf region comes at a pivotal moment when the Middle East is investing heavily in AI infrastructure, data sovereignty, and giga-scale projects that demand the same level of performance, security, and transparency that has defined HPC environments for decades. The company's deep roots in the global HPC community, combined with recent innovations like RLC-AI and its collaboration with NVIDIA to integrate CUDA natively, position CIQ uniquely to support the region's transition from traditional enterprise computing to AI-driven, performance-intensive workloads.

Rocky Linux has rapidly become the dominant Enterprise Linux platform, capturing over 40% of the market despite launching only four years ago. CIQ's commercial offerings build on this foundation with enterprise-grade support, security hardening and AI-optimised kernel enhancements that reduce deployment time from weeks to minutes.

From its new regional hub in the Middle East, CIQ will deliver solutions specifically designed for the unique demands of Gulf organisations:

• AI-Ready Infrastructure: RLC-AI provides out-of-the-box kernel-level and user-space optimisations for AI model training, tuning and inference, eliminating weeks of manual configuration
• Secure Software Supply Chain: RLC-H delivers proactively secured, compliant systems through validated supply chains for government, energy, manufacturing, healthcare, aerospace, defence, and financial sectors
• HPC-Grade Performance: Fuzzball, Apptainer (formerly Singularity) and Warewulf Pro enable federated computing across hybrid cloud and on-prem environments, and bring decades of HPC cluster management expertise to modern AI workloads
• Full Stack Control: from the operating system through containers, orchestration and workload management, CIQ's open-source foundation ensures transparency, data sovereignty and freedom from vendor lock-in

The regional office will also establish training and certification programmes for Gulf-based developers, partner with universities and research centres, and build local engineering capacity to support enterprise customers.

Adam Jackson has been appointed regional head, responsible for leading CIQ's growth and partnerships across the Gulf and Middle East region. "The future of computing in the Middle East will be defined by organisations that control their infrastructure from the base OS to AI at scale," said Jackson. "CIQ brings the performance, transparency and sovereignty that have powered US research and HPC environments for decades, now purpose-built for the AI era and the region's giga-scale ambitions."

Bjorn Hovland, chief operating officer of CIQ, commented: "The Gulf region's investments in AI infrastructure demand the performance, security and scalability that have defined HPC for decades. CIQ brings that proven expertise to the Middle East, enabling organisations to own and control their computing future from the operating system up. Our open-source foundation delivers the sovereignty and transparency these ambitious projects require, backed by enterprise-grade support that ensures long-term success."

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