Samer Choucair: Saudi Arabia Captures 93% of Gulf E-Commerce Investment Where Is the Money Going?
Investment leader Samer Choucair said Saudi Arabia’s capture of approximately 93% of e-commerce investment across the Gulf Cooperation Council in 2025, compared with around 46% in 2021, represents a significant shift in the region’s digital capital-allocation landscape.
However, Choucair stressed that this concentration of investment does not mean the opportunity is limited to online retail platforms themselves.
Data presented during the “New Geography of Growth” session in London showed that e-commerce penetration still represents only around 11% of Gulf retail, highlighting substantial room for further expansion across the sector.
According to Samer Choucair, the more important investment signal is not simply Saudi Arabia’s 93% share, but the gap between the amount of capital entering the market and the relatively modest penetration of e-commerce.
That gap could create a much broader investment cycle extending beyond online retailers into logistics, fulfillment, payments, digital infrastructure, and other technologies supporting the digital-commerce ecosystem. Discussions surrounding the data also pointed to a growing share of investment moving toward these enabling industries.
Choucair said Saudi Arabia possesses several structural advantages that could establish it as a central hub for digital commerce across the Gulf.
U.S. Department of Commerce data indicate that e-commerce currently accounts for approximately 10% of total Saudi retail sales, with the share expected to exceed 25% by 2035. While penetration rates differ between Saudi Arabia and the GCC as a whole, the figures suggest that a significant portion of the market’s potential remains ahead.
For investors, however, growth in digital penetration alone does not guarantee attractive returns.
Samer Choucair cautioned that institutional investors should not interpret the 93% figure as an assurance that elevated investment returns will continue. As competition intensifies, customer-acquisition costs and fulfillment expenses can place increasing pressure on platform margins.
That makes operational efficiency increasingly important to company valuations. The cost of processing and delivering each order, delivery speed, inventory management, digital payments, logistics infrastructure, and cybersecurity could ultimately become more important investment variables than headline gross merchandise value or user growth.
Choucair said the next phase of competition may therefore shift from a race to acquire customers toward a race to reduce the operating cost of every transaction.
The distinction is critical for institutional capital. Rapid sales growth can establish market share, but sustainable value creation requires companies to convert that growth into recurring and defensible cash flow.
Capital is therefore likely to become increasingly selective, favoring businesses capable of building scalable infrastructure and improving unit economics rather than simply expanding transaction volumes.
For Samer Choucair, Saudi Arabia’s extraordinary concentration of Gulf e-commerce investment represents both an opportunity and a risk.
The opportunity comes from the combination of rising digital adoption, a large consumer market, expanding logistics networks, and continued investment in the infrastructure supporting the digital economy.
The risk emerges when capital concentration pushes valuations and competition ahead of underlying profitability.
Choucair concluded that the real investment thesis is therefore not simply about the size of Saudi Arabia’s e-commerce market.
It is about identifying the companies that can generate sustainable returns from the infrastructure powering that market.
As Saudi Arabia moves deeper into the next stage of its digital transformation, the most valuable businesses may not necessarily be the platforms selling the most products. They may increasingly be the companies that move the package, process the payment, manage the inventory, secure the transaction, and reduce the cost of every digital order.