Saudi Arabia to Become Hotspot for AI Data Centres

Known for being rich with oil, Saudi Arabia is making its move to technology with a heavy investment and focus in technology and AI. It is part of its Visio, 2030 plan to broaden the country's economy away from oil.

Speaking with CNBC, Groq CEO and Co-Founder Jonathan Ross has said that Saudi Arabia is in preparation to become one of the hotspot spots for AI infrastructure. “One of the things that’s hard to export is energy. You have to move it, it’s physical, it costs money. Electricity, transporting it over transmission lines is very expensive,” he says.

The Middle East economy

According to PwC, from the support of AI, the Middle East is reported to see US$320bn worth of gain with Saudi Arabia benefiting from the gain by placing AI in the core of its economic strategy.

Jonathan said: “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.

“What you don’t want to do is build a data centre 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 isn’t, where there aren’t too many people, where the energy is underutilised. And that’s the Middle East, so this is the ideal place to build out.”

One of the companies working alongside Groq is Saudi AI company Humain​​​​​​​.

Tareq Amin, CEO of Humain said: “Our ambition is very clear. We want to be the third-largest AI provider in the world, behind the United States and China.”

What is the competition?

However, Saudi Arabia is faced with competition from the United Arab Emirates who is taking the lead within the region. 

By 2030, PwC is predicting AI to contribute a 13.6% GDP or US$96bn to the UAE economy. Saudi Arabia could see a US$135.2bn or 12.4% GDP from AI over the next five years.

This would place UAE in third place, with Saudi Arabia coming in behind at fourth on the global AI leaderboard.

Building AI capacity in the desert

With Saudi Arabia being a hot country, questions around the suitability to house the infrastructure are arising as data centres naturally run hot and require a lot of water for cooling purposes. 

Despite the government pushing for the upskilling of its citizens, the country has a digital skill shortage problem and it is expected that AI talent will be no different. 

That said, Groq is working with Aramco Digital, the digital and technology arm of Saudi Aramco, to construct the world’s largest inference data centre.

In early 2025, Groq secured US$1.5bn in investment from Saudi Arabia to grow its efforts and is supporting the growth of the Saudi Data and AI Authority’s own large language model.