Another Arab country is determined to become a global force in artificial intelligence. What is the plan
RIAD, Saudi Arabia (photo Vadim Nefedov, Dreamstime.com)
Saudi Arabia has money and oil and wants to become a force not only in sports, industry and tourism, but also in the AI field. Saudi have created a state -supported company to attract investments in the field of artificial intelligence from the US giants and this is just the beginning of a long -term plan.
Humain is called the company supported by the Saudi Pif Public Fund, which has total assets of over $ 900 billion. Public Investment Fund is one of the largest sovereign investment funds in the world. The main role of the fund is to invest in as many fields as possible the money from oil, to diversify the Saudi economy, as part of the strategy called Vision 2030.
Saudi Arabia aims to its new artificial intelligence company to attract investments from large American technology companies and launch a $ 10 billion risk capital fund, leading the efforts of the desert kingdom to become a global “Hub” in the AI field, writes Financial Times.
The General Manager of Humain had discussions with leaders from Openai, Xai and the investment fund Andreessen Horowitz, to see what can be materialized in the coming years.
Humain has already signed agreements worth $ 23 billion with US giants such as NVIDIA, AMD, Amazon Web Services and Qualcomm. The proeict is supervised by the inheriting prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto leader of the kingdom.
The objective is to achieve a capacity of 1.9 GW in data centers by 2030 and 6.6 GW by 2034, which would create one of the largest infrastructure projects in the world. At current prices, the project would be worth $ 77 billion.
The first phase of the construction of huge data centers will start with a 50 MW unit that will use 18,000 NVIDIA chips, following the extension to 500 MW (about 180,000 chips).
The data centers of the company Humain, powered by these chips, will host models of language in Arabic and tools of multimodal artificial intelligence, capable of processing voice, image and text. According to Reuters, the goal is to create models specific to the region, to support the infrastructure of smart cities, autonomous logistics and defense technologies.
Humain has also signed an association worth $ 10 billion with AMD and invests $ 2 billion together with Qualcomm, for the development of data centers and the design of chips in the Kingdom with the Capital La RIAD. Qualcomm will create a design center in RIAD, with 500 engineers. However, Humain does not intend to enter the production of chips.
Saudi Arabia and other golf states, such as the United Arab Emirates, want to become regional leaders in AI and use technology to diversify their oil-dependent economies.
Like the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia relies on collaboration with top American companies and Arab officials try to dispel the fears of US authorities related to American technology that could reach the hands of the Chinese, through the Golf states that are economically close to China.
China, through companies such as Huawei and ZTE, has invested massively in telecommunications networks (including 5G) in golf states (Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Qatar). The US believes that these technologies can provide Chinese indirect access to critical infrastructures and fear they can be used for economic or military espionage;
Americans are afraid that allies in the Gulf, in their pursuit after modernization and diversification of relationships, could allow China to enter Western systems and markets, including those related to artificial intelligence and strategic data. That is why Washington is pressing diplomatic pressure for the states of the region to choose: either they are with the West or China.
