The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia are engaged in a fierce competition to become the primary Middle Eastern hub for artificial intelligence (AI) technology. Their plans include building some of the largest data center clusters in the world, creating strategic ties with U.S. IT giants and spending and drawing veritable riches for their aspirations. According to the Gulf Studies Symposium, both nations are looking to diversify their reliance on oil earnings and view AI as a catalyst for economic expansion.
According to authorities at the Saudi Data and AI Authority, 70% of Saudi Arabia's strategic goals involve data and AI, making AI a key component of the country's Vision 2030 agenda, which identifies AI as crucial to economic change. The UAE even appointed a minister of state for AI in 2017 and created an AI university Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI). The university is now opening a Silicon Valley AI lab.
Early on, the UAE appeared to hold an edge with its proactive AI strategy and partnerships, but Saudi Arabia has roared back with major investments and state-backed initiatives. Humain an AI business supported by the state through its Public Investment Fund (PIF), intends to start a $10 billion venture capital fund. Ten billion dollars will be invested by Google Cloud to jointly construct and run an AI hub in Saudi Arabia.In order to increase demand for cutting-edge AI services, AWS and Humain announced a $5 billion joint investment to create a "AI Zone" in the kingdom. This is on top of the $5.3 billion that was previously announced to establish Saudi Arabia as a new AWS region.
It established MGX, an AI-focused investment firm supported by G42, a holding company for AI development, and the state-owned Mubadala investment firm. It plans to spend $100 billion on fundamental AI technology, semiconductors, and infrastructure. One of the investors in OpenAI's $500 million data center project, Stargate, is MGX.
A proposed AI data center hub from Open AI G42, Oracle, Nvidia, and SoftBank is called Stargate UAE. It plans to construct a 200 megawatt, 1 gigawatt data center cluster that will be operational by 2026.
With the Abu Dhabi Government Digital Strategy for 2025–2027, Abu Dhabi is spending $3.54 billion to automate all of its government operations. The rivalry between Saudi Arabia and the UAE is unfolding against the backdrop of AI competition between the U.S. and China. Trump wants to ensure that countries in the Persian Gulf stay dependent on U.S. technology instead of pivoting to China. In a diplomatic gesture, Trump removed Biden’s chip restrictions on the region.
Post a Comment