Edge Chairman Sees Export Ambition In Sight

Edge Group Chairman Faisal Al Bannai says the company’s defense export ambitions could still reach a major milestone this year, with more than half of bookings coming from abroad.

When the company was set up little more than five years ago, only about 2% of its business was abroad. That grew to 35% last year, and Al Bannai says, “if we do close some of the deals we're expecting to close this year, it could go to 50% or beyond 50% of our orders.”

The customer base has been broad, he says, with sales coming from the Middle East, Asia, Europe and Latin America. Only the U.S. remains a blank for deals.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has grown Edge in part through a series of acquisitions. Al Bannai says deals will remain part of the company’s strategy going forward, even as Edge focuses on building up its in-house capabilities and grows international partnerships. Edge, which used the IDEX 2025 defense expo to announce several partnerships, will increasingly focus on arrangements leading to co-development and creation of new intellectual property that can be sold abroad.

Al Bannai also says recent conflicts are informing the company’s strategy, particularly the heavy use of a large number of uncrewed systems in the Russia-Ukraine war. “In the next two years, you will see us further growing in autonomous platforms. You'll see us further trying to disrupt with cost-effective solutions and heavy leverage of [artificial intelligence].”

Edge also is trying to get in early in the use of quantum technology in defense applications. The early focus is on quantum computing, with efforts in quantum sensing also in the pipeline, says Al Bannai, who also serves as the secretary general of the UAE’s Advanced Technology Research Council. Quantum computing efforts will come later.