Planning a trip to Saudi Arabia? Be prepared to face long traffic as you might land behind the long queue of tech executives, engineers and sales representatives from Amazon, Google, TikTok and other companies on their way to make friends with Saudi Arabia. But Why? Experts believe that billions of dollars in Saudi money can help to build a tech industry to complement its oil dominance.
On a Monday morning last month, people endured a three-hour traffic jam as their cars headed towards a mammoth conference at an event space in the desert, 50 miles outside Riyadh. However, to skip the congestion, frustrated event goers drove onto the highway shoulder. They sped past those following traffic rules. Also a few took advantage of a special “V.V.I.P.s” freeway exit.
Why is Saudi Arabia ahead?
Adam Selipsky, chief executive, Amazon’s cloud computing division, announced a $5.3 billion investment in Saudi Arabia for data centers and artificial intelligence technology. Arvind Krishna, the chief executive of IBM, is expected to highlight a “lifetime friendship” with the kingdom. In addition to this, executives from Huawei and other firms discussed how Saudi Arabia can boom the AI and IoT sector. With insights from Saudi Arabia’s state press agency, over $10 billion in deals were done during the event.
Reports suggest that about $100 billion was funded by Saudi Arabia this year to invest in A.I. and other technology. Andreessen Horowitz, the Silicon Valley venture capital firm, and other investors are expected to add on about $40 billion into A.I. companies.
Will Saudi Arabia lead the tech world?
The spending on the advancements of technology dates back to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman visionary blueprint, unveiled in 2016 as “Vision 2030”. In addition to this last month Saudi officials announced $1 billion in funding for GAIA, an AI startup accelerator.
Each startup in the programme was granted a grant worth about $40,000 in exchange for spending at least three months in Riyadh, along with a potential $100,000 investment. Entrepreneurs will need to register their company in the kingdom and spend about 50% of their investment in Saudi Arabia. Furthermore, they will also receive access to computing power purchased from Amazon and Google free of charge. Experts suggest that this might be a clickbait for young tech entrepreneurs to help in boosting the “Vision 2030” by Mohammed bin Salman.
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