Saudi Arabia & UAE Compete for AI Supremacy in the Region

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are taking things up a notch when it comes to their race to be the main AI tech hub in the Middle East. The two countries are spending and attracting investments to reach their goals and ambitions. If you're wondering how... We're about to get into the nitty gritty details. 

Join our FREE WhatsApp channel to dive into a world of real-time engagement!

Futuristic Visions, Alliances, and More

When you think about all the AI news regarding these two countries, what are some of the things that stand out? Their new strategic alliances with U.S. tech giants and their plans to build some of the world's largest data center clusters.

Additionally, both Saudi and the UAE are trying to diversify and advance their revenues away from the dependence on oil revenues. So, this is where AI steps in as a new contender to drive their economic growth, according to the Gulf Studies Symposium.

Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 strategy mentioned AI as an essential aspect to the country's economic transformation. 70% of its strategic goals involve data and AI, according to officials at the Saudi Data and AI Authority.

Alternatively, the UAE appointed a minister of state for AI in 2017 and they created an AI university, Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) in Silicon Valley. 

In the beginning, the UAE looked like it had the upper hand with its proactive AI strategy and partnerships but now... Saudi Arabia is making moves with major investments and state-backed initiatives.

Saudi and the UAE's AI Commitments and Investments

Saudi Arabia's year-to-date in conjunction with U.S. President Trump's visit in May:

• Humain, a state-backed AI company under its Public Investment Fund (PIF), is planning to launch a $10 billion venture capital fund.
• Google Cloud and PIF are investing $10 billion to jointly build and operate an AI hub in Saudi Arabia.
• AWS and Humain announced a joint $5 billion investment to build an “AI Zone” in the kingdom to grow demand for advanced AI services. This is in addition to the previously announced $5.3 billion to develop Saudi Arabia as a new AWS region.
• Oracle announced it was investing $14 billion in Saudi Arabia’s digital cloud and AI infrastructure over 10 years.
• Equinix is reportedly building a $1 billion data center to meet growing demand for cloud, AI and enterprise workloads.

The UAE's AI investments:

• It launched MGX, an investment firm focused on AI and backed by the state-owned Mubadala investment firm and AI development holding company G42. It aims to invest $100 billion in AI infrastructure, chips and core AI technologies. MGX is one of the investors in Stargate, OpenAI’s $500 million data center project.
• Stargate UAE is a proposed AI data center hub from OpenAI, G42, Oracle, Nvidia and SoftBank. It expects to build a 1 gigawatt data center cluster with 200 megawatts expected to go live in 2026.
• Abu Dhabi is investing $3.54 billion to automate all of its government processes through the Abu Dhabi Government Digital Strategy for 2025 to 2027.

The rivalry between Saudi and UAE is being revealed against the backdrop of AI competition between the United States and China. Trump wants countries in the Middle East to depend on U.S. tech rather than relying on China's.

This article was previously published on saudimoments. To see the original article, click here