Saudi Arabia partners with tech giants in $14.9B AI expansion

Cointelegraph

Saudi Arabia has announced combined investments and projects worth $14.9 billion in the AI sector during a tech conference in its capital city of Riyadh.

On Feb. 9, Saudi Minister Abdullah bin Amer Alswaha said the kingdom — in partnership with global tech innovators — would invest $14.9 billion in AI, emerging tech and cloud. The tech partners include Google Cloud, Lenovo, Alibaba Cloud, Qualcomm, Groq and Salesforce, among others.

Ahmad Al-Khowaiter, the executive vice president of technology and innovation at Aramco, added:

“Our (Aramco) business is all about scale. That’s why we need to partner, and no one company can deliver the promise of AI. It has to be a partnership, it has to be many companies that put in place the technologies that we need.”

Aramco is the seventh largest company in the world in terms of market capitalization after global tech giants such as Apple, Amazon, Nvidia, Microsoft, and Google, according to CompaniesMarketCap data.

Tech giants chip in to create Saudi Arabia’s AI hub

The Saudi giant partnered with Groq in a $1.5 billion deal to build AI-powered cloud computing capabilities and intends to sign agreements with other AI companies, Al-Khowaiter said.

Multiple AI commitments for the Middle East

Saudi manufacturing giant Alat and Lenovo announced a $2 billion investment to locally build an advanced AI and robotics-based manufacturing and tech facility. Lenovo will also establish a regional headquarters in Riyadh as part of the deal.

Google, Qualcomm, and Alibaba Cloud have also announced the launch of various initiatives dedicated to localized AI innovation.

Additionally, Salesforce, Databricks, Tencent Cloud and SambaNova committed to investments worth $500 million, $300 million, $150 million and $140 million, respectively.

In an unrelated but concurrent development, stablecoin issuer Tether also announced a partnership with a United Arab Emirates-based real estate platform, Reelly Tech, on Feb. 6.

The partnership aims to simplify property transactions using Tether’s USDT stablecoin.

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Saudi Arabia partners with tech giants in $14.9B AI expansion

Risk Disclosure