Saudi Arabia is positioning itself as a key player in the global artificial intelligence landscape, leveraging its energy resources to become a leading exporter of data.
Saudi Arabia is rapidly emerging as a significant hub for artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, driven by its vast energy reserves. This development positions the kingdom as a crucial player in the global AI race, according to Groq CEO Jonathan Ross.
The kingdom’s abundant energy resources have attracted major tech companies, many of which are launching large-scale infrastructure projects in the region. These initiatives are part of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030, an ambitious plan aimed at transforming its oil-dependent economy into a diversified, innovation-driven powerhouse.
In an interview with CNBC’s Dan Murphy at the Future Investment Initiative (FII) conference in Riyadh, Ross emphasized that Saudi Arabia’s energy advantage could facilitate its evolution into a global data exporter. This would place the kingdom at the forefront of the next wave of AI infrastructure development.
“One of the things that’s hard to export is energy. You have to move it; it’s physical, and it costs money. Electricity, transporting it over transmission lines is very expensive,” Ross explained. He highlighted that data, in contrast, is inexpensive to move. “Since there’s plenty of excess energy in the Kingdom, the idea is to move the data here, put the compute here, do the computation for AI here, and send the results.”
Ross further noted the importance of strategically locating data centers. “What you don’t want to do is build a data center right next to people, where it’s expensive for the land, or where the energy is already being used. You want to build it where there aren’t too many people, where the energy is underutilized. And that’s the Middle East, so this is the ideal place to build out.”
According to PwC, artificial intelligence could contribute as much as $320 billion to the Middle East’s economy, and Saudi Arabia is keen to capitalize on this opportunity by making AI a core component of its long-term growth and modernization strategies.
The CEO of Humain, a state-backed AI and data center company collaborating with Groq, expressed ambitions for the firm to become the “third-largest AI provider in the world, behind the United States and China.”
However, Saudi Arabia’s AI aspirations face stiff competition, particularly from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which has been at the forefront of AI adoption in the region. PwC projects that by 2030, AI could contribute approximately $96 billion to the UAE’s economy, representing 13.6% of its GDP, while it could add about $135 billion to Saudi Arabia’s economy, or 12.4% of its GDP. If these forecasts materialize, the UAE may outpace its larger neighbor, potentially leaving Saudi Arabia in fourth place on the global AI stage.
Despite these challenges, Saudi Arabia’s climate and talent landscape present significant hurdles for its AI ambitions. Data centers require substantial cooling and water resources, which can be difficult to manage in one of the hottest and driest regions of the world. Additionally, the kingdom continues to face a shortage of tech and AI specialists, although government initiatives aimed at upskilling the local workforce are gaining traction.
Nevertheless, Saudi Arabia’s momentum in AI remains strong. Groq has partnered with Aramco Digital, the technology division of Saudi Aramco, to develop what is being termed the “world’s largest inferencing data center.” Ross noted that the chips used in this endeavor, manufactured in upstate New York, are specifically designed for AI inference, the process of deploying trained models into real-world applications.
Earlier this year, Groq secured $1.5 billion in funding from Saudi Arabia to expand its operations and enhance its presence in the region. The company is also contributing to the Saudi Data and AI Authority’s efforts to build its own large language model, further solidifying the kingdom’s growing footprint in the global AI ecosystem.
“It’s optimized for interfacing with the kingdom, so if you need to be able to ask about something here, it has all the data that you need to get the appropriate answers. Whereas other LLMs haven’t been tuned; they don’t have access to a database that’s as rich with information about the local region,” Ross stated.
As nations increasingly harness AI, the demand for localized data has become paramount. Many countries are recognizing that models trained primarily on English-language datasets from industrialized economies often fail to reflect their own cultural, linguistic, and social contexts. This underscores the growing importance of developing region-specific AI systems.
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