Saudi Arabia is destined to be a global leader in artificial intelligence (AI) and data, having taken steps to make $100 billion-worth of investment in the field. This huge investment as the foundation of its Vision 2030 plan, sets out to reshape the Kingdom’s economy away from oil dependence, forging a secure knowledge-based future.
Named “Project Transcendence,” it aims to catapult Saudi Arabia’s AI capabilities, create a flourishing ecosystem for tech innovation locally and internationally, and encourage significant global players in the technology industry to work in the Kingdom.
The Public Investment Fund (PIF) has already created Alat, a daughter company positioned to invest $100 billion in technology-sector verticals generally over the next decade with AI as a primary target.
There are also partnerships being struck, with Google Cloud, for example, reportedly creating a $10 billion joint venture with the PIF to build and operate an AI hub. Oracle, too, recently unveiled a $14 billion investment in Saudi Arabia’s digital cloud and AI capabilities in the subsequent ten years.
A significant part of this investment is accelerating growth in data center capacity. Saudi Arabia appears to have an even bigger role in future data center capacity, with plans for 2,200 megawatts compared to 500 megawatts in the UAE. This infrastructure is also vital in order to cope with the huge demand of computation and storage resources to support advanced AI.
NEOM, the city of the future, is also a major recipient, with a $5 billion plant investment for a 1.5GW AI data center in its Oxagon industrial area, which is to be operational by 2028 and run solely on renewable power.
The Kingdom is also proactively crafting legislation, including a proposed “Global AI Hub Law,” that secures foreign-owned data centers and data sovereignty. That’s in the service of positioning Saudi Arabia as a secure, and appealing, destination for companies that need a place to store and process data, with the hope of them exporting data services globally.
In addition to infrastructure, Saudi Arabia is placing major bets on talent development, including new AI training programs at scale and investments such as Data Center Academy to develop local expertise.
The vision includes developing the world’s first Arabic-language AI models, and positioning the Kingdom as a first mover in regional innovation. It’s all part of the bigger picture of the kingdom’s ambition to position itself as an AI powerhouse on the global stage that’s taking measures to stimulate economic growth and innovation.
