What Sakhr Software does

Sakhr Software Company is a private Abu Dhabi-headquartered firm founded circa 1982–1984 that develops advanced Arabic natural language processing (NLP) software for government and enterprise clients. Over more than 40 years, the company has built a six-product commercial suite covering Arabic–English machine translation (Sakhr MT), Arabic OCR, Arabic text-to-speech, linguistic correction (Sahehly), document management (ArabDox), and Arabic search (IDRISI), all underpinned by a hybrid rules-based and statistical NLP architecture and decades of proprietary Arabic corpora. The technology stack spans text, audio, and image modalities and is positioned as award-winning and accuracy-differentiated, particularly for handling the script-level complexities of Arabic.

The company monetizes primarily through enterprise software licensing supplemented by customization, implementation, and support services, sold via a direct enterprise field sales motion targeting government agencies and large institutions. Customers span government (US Department of State, European Commission, Health Canada, multiple GCC and North African ministries), education and international organizations (Yale, World Bank, Arab League, Bibliotheca Alexandrina), enterprise technology (Microsoft, Intel, Northrop Grumman, Kaspersky, Sony Gulf), and telecommunications (Etisalat, Zain, Omantel, Mobinil) across GCC, North Africa, North America, and Europe. Strategic research partnerships with Johns Hopkins Applied Research Lab and Raytheon BBN, plus technology partnerships with Microsoft, Intel, Follett Software, and PROMT, extend the company's R&D and distribution footprint. Revenue, headcount trend, and post-2009 strategic activity are not disclosed in the available data, limiting visibility into current commercial momentum.

Name

Sakhr Software

Legal name

Sakhr Software LLC

Website

https://sakhr.com

Company type

Private

Founded year

1984

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

251–500 employees

Short description

Sakhr Software develops advanced Arabic NLP software — including machine translation, OCR, text-to-speech, document management, linguistic correction, and search — licensing it to government agencies and enterprises across the GCC, North Africa, North America, and Europe.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Arabic Language Technology Software

NAICS

Software Publishers (513210)

SIC

Services-Prepackaged Software (7372)

akta.pro primary industry

Machine Translation & Multilingual NLP (HDAAADAD)

akta.pro secondary industries

OCR, ICR & Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) (BPAAAKAB), Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) & Document Generation/Templating (HDAEAGAL)

Keywords

• Arabic natural language processing
• Arabic machine translation
• Arabic optical character recognition
• Arabic text-to-speech
• Document management software

Headquarters

HQ city

Abu Dhabi

HQ country

United Arab Emirates

HQ region

Middle East

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Marketing or Sales, Operations, Infrastructure

Revenue model

1. Enterprise Software Licensing: Licensing of Arabic NLP software solutions including machine translation, OCR, text-to-speech, document management, and search engines to government and enterprise clients.
2. Professional Services: Customization, implementation, and support services for enterprise clients deploying Arabic NLP solutions.

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels1 record

Marketing channels2 records

Core offering

Sakhr Software develops and licenses a suite of Arabic language technology solutions built on 40+ years of computational linguistics research. Its products include Sahehly (Arabic linguistic correction), Sakhr OCR (Arabic optical character recognition), Sakhr MT (bidirectional Arabic-English machine translation), Arabic TTS (text-to-speech), ArabDox (multilingual document management), and IDRISI (Arabic search engine), sold primarily to government agencies and large enterprises.

Product overview

Sakhr Software offers a comprehensive suite of Arabic NLP-based software solutions, consisting of six distinct products that address different aspects of Arabic language processing. Sahehly provides linguistic correction; Sakhr OCR handles document scanning; Sakhr MT delivers machine translation between Arabic and English; Arabic TTS synthesizes natural voice output; ArabDox manages document storage and retrieval; and IDRISI powers advanced search capabilities. These products share a foundation in Sakhr's 40+ years of Arabic computational linguistics research and collectively serve governments and enterprises across GCC, North Africa, North America, and Europe.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• Sahehly: Sophisticated linguistic correction suite for Arabic textual perfection with thorough linguistic corrections and precise text shaping using AI.
• ArabDox
• IDRISI

Products and services

• Sahehly

Quantifiable outcome

• ArabDox successfully supports over 12,000 users and 10 million documents

Named customers21 records

Segments4 records

Ideal customer profiles4 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

AI capability6 records

Feature6 records

Partnerships

Two partnerships are on record, tiered core.

• Johns Hopkins Applied Research LabcoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerResearch partnership for joint development of advanced Arabic NLP solutions. Collaborates on applied research in computational linguistics and language technology.
• Raytheon BBNcoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerStrategic research partnership for Arabic language technology development. Jointly develops highly customizable and comprehensive solutions.

Scale indicators4 records

Recent moves5 records

Expansion highlights5 records

Direct peers

• Basis Technology: Provides multilingual text analytics and NLP (Rosette platform) covering entity extraction, translation, and search across many languages including Arabic. Directly comparable to Sakhr as a specialist enterprise NLP vendor with defense and government customers.
• ABBYY: Global leader in OCR and intelligent document processing, with long-standing Arabic OCR capabilities. Directly overlaps with Sakhr OCR and ArabDox for Arabic document digitization in enterprise and government workflows.
• Nuance Communications (now part of Microsoft): Enterprise speech and TTS vendor with multilingual voice synthesis including Arabic. Directly comparable to Sakhr's Arabic TTS offering for enterprise and healthcare/government voice applications.
• PROMT Translation Software: Established machine translation vendor with multilingual MT engines. Already a Sakhr technology partner for translation, and a comparable MT-focused enterprise software peer.

Broad incumbents

• Microsoft (Azure Cognitive Services / Translator): Offers Arabic NLP, translation, OCR, and speech services via Azure, bundled into broader enterprise cloud deals. Represents the principal hyperscaler competitive threat and is also a Sakhr partner, illustrating the coopetition dynamic.
• Google Cloud Translation & Speech: Provides Arabic MT, OCR (Document AI), and TTS at scale within Google Cloud. Competes with Sakhr on translation and document AI for Arabic, particularly for multinational enterprise and government cloud buyers.
• Amazon Web Services (Translate, Comprehend, Textract): Hyperscaler offering Arabic MT, NLP, and OCR as managed cloud APIs. Competes on price and bundling for enterprise and public-sector customers evaluating Sakhr's standalone products.

Regional players

• Tarjama: Leading Arabic translation and localization services provider in MENA. Comparable to Sakhr MT as a regional Arabic-language player, though primarily a services business rather than product vendor.

Emerging players

• Inception (G42 Arabic AI): UAE-based Arabic LLM and AI products company under G42. Represents the emerging wave of Arabic-first AI-native competitors that could pressure Sakhr's MT and NLP positioning from the same regional base.
• Appen: Provides Arabic language data, annotation, and evaluation services that feed Arabic NLP model training. Adjacent competitor and potential partner in the Arabic NLP data value chain that supports Sakhr's product accuracy claims.

Market position

Strengths4 records

Weaknesses4 records

Competitive moat5 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights6 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/sakhrsoftware
• Facebookfacebook.com/sakhrsoftwares
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/sakhr-software

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles3 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds1 record

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A1 record

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Sakhr Software