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In northwest Saudi Arabia near the Red Sea, a planned $5 billion data center would provide enough computing muscle for coders as far away as Europe to build artificial intelligence. On the country’s opposite coast, another planned multibillion-dollar complex could be used by A.I. developers in Asia and Africa.
For generations, Saudi Arabia exported oil. Now it wants to export one of the digital era’s most coveted resources: computing power.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is seizing a chance to turn Saudi Arabia’s oil wealth into tech influence. Few nations can match the kingdom’s cheap energy, deep pockets and open land — the ingredients that tech firms need to operate the vast, power-hungry data centers that run modern A.I.
Already, Saudi Arabia has been negotiating with American tech giants about using its future data centers and deepening their ties. Executives from OpenAI, Google, Qualcomm, Intel and Oracle are attending the country’s annual Future Investment Initiative conference that begins Monday, nicknamed Davos in the Desert. Next month, Prince Mohammed is scheduled to visit the United States.
One potential deal in the works would provide computing power to Elon Musk’s xAI, said Saeed Al-Dobas, a senior executive at Humain, a new state-backed company coordinating many A.I. projects.
“Amazon was here yesterday. Microsoft we had this morning,” he said in an interview this month, adding that what was being negotiated with Mr. Musk was a “way, way bigger plan.”
