Saudi Arabia commits $14.9 billion to AI sector with global tech firms

Monday saw Saudi Arabia announce a substantial investment of $14.9 billion in artificial intelligence (AI) and related technologies. The declaration was made during the LEAP 2025 Tech Conference held in Riyadh. Saudi Minister Abdullah bin Amer Alswaha detailed the kingdom’s strategy to collaborate with international technology leaders to bolster its AI, emerging tech, and cloud services sectors.

The partnerships include major names in the industry such as Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Cloud, Lenovo, Alibaba (NYSE:BABA) Cloud, Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM), Groq, and Salesforce (NYSE:CRM). This move is part of Saudi Arabia’s broader vision to diversify its economy and become a hub for technological innovation.

Aramco (TADAWUL:2222), the world’s seventh-largest company by market capitalization, is at the forefront of these initiatives. Ahmad Al-Khowaiter, Aramco’s Executive Vice President of Technology and Innovation, emphasized the importance of collaboration in realizing the potential of AI. "Our 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,” Al-Khowaiter stated.

In a significant move, Aramco has partnered with Groq in a $1.5 billion deal to develop AI-powered cloud computing capabilities. The company is also poised to sign agreements with other AI firms to further its technological capabilities.

The Middle East region is witnessing multiple AI investments. Alat, a Saudi manufacturing giant, and Lenovo have committed $2 billion to create an advanced AI and robotics-based manufacturing and tech facility. Lenovo also plans to set up a regional headquarters in Riyadh. Other tech giants like Google, Qualcomm, and Alibaba Cloud are launching initiatives focused on localized AI innovation.

Additional investments include Salesforce’s $500 million, Databricks’ $300 million, Tencent (HK:0700) Cloud’s $150 million, and SambaNova’s $140 million commitments to the sector.

In a separate development, Tether, a leading stablecoin issuer, announced a partnership with Reelly Tech, a United Arab Emirates-based real estate platform, on February 6. This collaboration aims to facilitate property transactions using Tether’s USDT stablecoin, further indicating the region’s growing interest in leveraging technology for economic growth.

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