Saudi Arabia is making significant strides in becoming a major hub for artificial intelligence (AI). Recent high-profile events and partnerships highlight the kingdom’s commitment to this goal.
In the past few months, Saudi Arabia has hosted numerous AI-related events and leaders, showcasing its ambition to attract AI companies and investments. A notable event was the Global AI Summit, which featured speakers from prominent AI companies like Nvidia, Qualcomm, Google, Microsoft, and Cohere.
During the summit, a new partnership was announced between Groq, a chip firm based in Mountain View, and Saudi Aramco. This collaboration aims to build the largest AI inference data center. Groq, established by former Google engineers, is a notable competitor to Nvidia, specializing in chips for AI inference.
Last month, Groq secured $640 million in funding, valuing the company at $2.8 billion. CEO Jonathan Ross emphasized the importance of inference in the AI sector, noting that training AI models is a solved problem.
Saudi Arabia’s push into AI is part of its broader Vision 2030 plan to diversify its economy away from oil. This initiative is supported by the Public Investment Fund (PIF), the country’s sovereign wealth fund.
In March, Saudi Arabia generated buzz with its LEAP conference, featuring speakers like AWS CEO Adam Selipsky and IBM CEO Arvind Krishna. AWS committed to investing over $5.3 billion in Saudi Arabia to build data centers for AI.
The same month, it was reported that Saudi Arabia had allocated $40 billion for a new AI investment fund, potentially the world’s largest. Discussions with venture capital firm A16z were also underway, aiming to leverage their expertise in identifying promising AI startups.
Saudi Arabia’s deep pockets and strategic investments indicate its serious commitment to becoming a global AI powerhouse. The stakes are high, as AI is one of the key industries the kingdom is betting on to transition away from its oil-dependent economy.