About Cherian Varghese
Cherian Varghese, Senior Vice President of Technology for the Middle East and Africa at Oracle, has been a prominent voice on artificial intelligence and cloud infrastructure in 2025. In a September 2025 TEDx talk at AURAK, he examined whether AI augments or undermines human intelligence, stating that AI will automate many jobs to "95% perfection" and that the technology is at an early stage, with society having "traversed only 5% of the AI journey." He also discussed the Stargate project, a conglomerate involving Oracle, OpenAI, and a SoftBank-funded company, and warned that AI-generated content could be manipulated by politicians to alter historical narratives, placing responsibility on ethics and compliance leaders.
At LEAP 2025 in Riyadh, Varghese announced that Zoom had introduced an AI component hosted on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, building on their existing partnership. He described Oracle's strategy in the region as a hybrid model of public and sovereign data centers, citing data sovereignty requirements in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and other Gulf states. Varghese noted that Oracle has been operating in Saudi Arabia for 30 years and now has the largest number of public data centers of any vendor in the region, with sovereign cloud partnerships with STC and du Telecom. He characterized the current moment as the beginning of an exponential growth phase for AI, predicting it will become as ubiquitous as the internet.
Source: AI-verified profile updated from Cherian Varghese's recent appearances.
Browse all interviews →
✨ AI-enhanced transcript with speaker attribution
I
Interviewer0:00
I spoke via Skype with Cherian Varghese. He's the co-author of the World Health Organization's global report on diabetes, and I started by asking him why diabetes is such a growing health problem.
C
Cherian Varghese0:14
Most of the people with diabetes do not get diagnosed, as it is in many parts of the world, especially in parts of the world where the health system capacity is very minimal. And that's why it's a silent disease, and it causes various complications and premature deaths. To go about preventing this, I think one should start by looking at early interventions, like promoting breastfeeding, preventing children from being exposed to unhealthy food marketing, making sure that they have healthier foods and physical activity in schools. As they go into adulthood, just make sure that they have healthier choices available which are cheaper and accessible, and workplaces should enable them to be more physically active. All of this relates to the fact that the global explosion is a result of the increase in overweight and obesity in the world. So there is a parallel thing happening in the world: now one in three adults are overweight, and one in ten is obese. So that is a huge change in the composition of the body fat of people in the world, which is one of the most important risk factors for diabetes.
I
Interviewer1:24
What are the doctors who read this report said that when you look at the numbers, and so many people have it, it's happening in countries where they just don't have the access to healthcare or some of the other things that you might find in more affluent countries. Do you agree with that?
C
Cherian Varghese1:37
Well, yes, very much. In fact, if you look at the access to medicines and technologies, it is woefully inadequate in most of the lower and lower-middle-income countries. And this hampers everything, because if the lab diagnosis is not done adequately, that causes problems. Even after diagnosis, if there is not adequate access to medicines, which are generic medicines, but even if they are not equally accessible, then that causes a serious problem in leading to complications. So when countries look at universal health coverage, it includes affordable medicines to all people with diabetes. So that is one of the reasons WHO is also promoting universal health coverage, which includes all these aspects of equity as well.
I
Interviewer2:21
Let me ask you about the food industry, because there's this call that they reduce the fat and the sugar content in their foods, but we haven't seen them really moving in that direction. Do you think they'll listen once they've seen this report?
C
Cherian Varghese2:32
We call on all of them to respond, because this is everyone's responsibility. It's not just one agency's responsibility. Food manufacturers have a major responsibility in ensuring that healthier options are available, they are available in an affordable manner, and also are marketed appropriately. So I think the food industry has a responsibility in this area, especially in a world where people are consuming more and more processed foods compared to 20 or 30 years back.
