{"id":23522,"date":"2025-07-25T17:14:14","date_gmt":"2025-07-25T17:14:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/23522\/"},"modified":"2025-07-25T17:14:14","modified_gmt":"2025-07-25T17:14:14","slug":"saudi-team-win-4-medals-at-2025-international-physics-olympiad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/23522\/","title":{"rendered":"Saudi team win 4 medals at 2025 International Physics Olympiad"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n\tDHAHRAN: In a world racing toward automation, Klemen Simonic believes the most natural interface is also the most enduring: the human voice.<\/p>\n


\n\tAs founder and CEO of Soniox \u2014 a cutting-edge speech-to-text platform \u2014 Simonic is betting that voice-powered technology will drive the next wave of digital innovation.<\/p>\n


\n\tAnd in a country like Saudi Arabia, where smartphones dominate daily life and a young population is hungry for digital solutions, the potential is hard to ignore.<\/p>\n


\n\tSoniox, which Simonic launched five years ago, offers speech recognition, transcription and real-time multilingual translation in more than 60 languages.<\/p>\n


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\n\tUnlike many competitors, it delivers ultra-fast, token-level outputs in milliseconds \u2014 a critical advantage for live assistants, wearables, bots and smart speakers.<\/p>\n


\n\tBut Simonic\u2019s journey toward building the company began long before the rise of generative AI.\u00a0<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cI started in programming development right after high school, and I was invited to join the Jozef Stefan Institute in Slovenia, one of the best institutes in this part of Europe,\u201d he told Arab News.\u00a0<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cI was working there with Ph.D. students and postdocs on machine learning, natural language processing, dependency parsing, tokenization, tagging and entity extraction.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tKlemen Simonic (2nd right) and his Soniox team. (Supplied) <\/p>\n


\n\tThat early exposure led him to two internships at Stanford University in 2009 and 2011, where he worked alongside top researchers in AI. \u201cI wanted to join Google to work on these cool things,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n


\n\tAfter an internship there in 2014, Simonic was courted by both Google and Facebook \u2014 ultimately joining the latter in 2015 to help build speech recognition systems now used across Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.<\/p>\n


\n\tToday, his company is focused entirely on voice AI, and its promise goes beyond convenience.\u00a0<\/p>\n


\n\tWith privacy and compliance built in \u2014 including SOC 2 Type II certification and HIPAA readiness \u2014 Soniox is already being used in hospitals, call centers and emergency rooms where clear, accurate transcription can be a life-saving tool.<\/p>\n


\n\t\tThis section contains relevant reference points, placed in (Opinion field)<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cWe have many healthcare customers using our API in emergency rooms where real-time AI interpretation can bridge communication gaps that human translators sometimes cannot, especially with complex medical terminology,\u201d said Simonic.<\/p>\n


\n\tSaudi Arabia represents a particularly compelling market for the company\u2019s ambitions. With more than 90 percent smartphone penetration and a population where 70 percent of people are aged under 35, the Kingdom is fertile ground for voice-enabled technologies.<\/p>\n


\n\tThe widespread adoption of government-developed platforms like Tawakkalna during the COVID-19 pandemic only accelerated the Kingdom\u2019s reliance on mobile-first services.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cData and artificial intelligence contribute to achieving Saudi Arabia\u2019s Vision 2030; this is because, out of 96, 66 of the direct and indirect goals of the vision are related to data and AI,\u201d according to the Saudi Data & AI Authority.<\/p>\n


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\n\tThe Kingdom\u2019s communications and IT sector is now worth more than $44 billion \u2014 4.1 percent of gross domestic product \u2014 and expanding quickly with strategic investments in cloud computing, automation and smart infrastructure.<\/p>\n


\n\tAlthough Soniox does not yet have a team on the ground in the region, the company sees significant interest from Saudi organizations exploring AI-powered transcription and customer service tools.<\/p>\n


\n\tSimonic said there are pilot programs in countries like Portugal and interest from companies in Saudi Arabia looking to improve call center and transcription services.<\/p>\n


\n\tAnd while Arabic remains one of the more complex languages for voice AI, Simonic sees both the challenge and the opportunity. Many of Saudi Arabia\u2019s rural communities speak dialects rich in cultural nuance \u2014 languages that are often excluded from mainstream datasets.<\/p>\n


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\n\tThis environment offers fertile ground for Soniox\u2019s technology, which strives to \u201cenable all languages, so everyone in the world can speak and be understood by AI.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tSimonic\u2019s team, primarily based in Slovenia, is committed to expanding language support to make the technology more inclusive, even in markets where none of the developers speak the local tongue.<\/p>\n


\n\tSoniox is also designed with flexibility in mind. Businesses can integrate its API without storing any audio or transcripts, ensuring tight data control. For individual users, features like encrypted transcripts and a summarizing tool enhance productivity \u2014 even for the tech-averse.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cMy mom is not very tech-savvy, but she uses our app to build her grocery shopping list,\u201d Simonic said. \u201cThat was not the original purpose, but it shows how technology can evolve in ways we didn\u2019t expect.\u201d<\/p>\n


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\n\tIn July, Soniox launched a new comparison tool that allows developers and businesses to benchmark different speech AI providers using their own voice samples and real-world data.<\/p>\n


\n\tIt is another step toward transparency and broader adoption \u2014 especially in regions like the Gulf, where choosing the right solution can hinge on performance in diverse linguistic contexts.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cThe tech morphs, but the human voice remains the most intimate and effective way we communicate,\u201d Simonic said.<\/p>\n


\n\tAs Saudi Arabia pushes forward with its digital transformation under Vision 2030, technologies like Soniox may find their voice amplified \u2014 not just as a tool for productivity, but also as a bridge between language, innovation and access in a rapidly changing world.

\n\t\u00a0<\/p>\n


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