From cointelegraph by Arijit Sarkar

Saudi Arabia has announced combined investments and projects worth $14.9 billion in the AI sector during a tech conference in its capital city of Riyadh.

On Feb. 9, Saudi Minister Abdullah bin Amer Alswaha said the kingdom — in partnership with global tech innovators — would invest $14.9 billion in AI, emerging tech and cloud. The tech partners include Google Cloud, Lenovo, Alibaba Cloud, Qualcomm, Groq and Salesforce, among others.

Saudi Arabia announces $14.9 billion in AI investments via tech partnerships at the LEAP 2025 Tech Conference. Source: Ministry of Communications and Information Technology of Saudi Arabia

Ahmad Al-Khowaiter, the executive vice president of technology and innovation at Aramco, added:

“Our (Aramco) 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.”

Aramco is the seventh largest company in the world in terms of market capitalization after global tech giants such as Apple, Amazon, Nvidia, Microsoft, and Google, according to CompaniesMarketCap data.

Largest Companies by market capitalization. Source: CompaniesMarketCap

Tech giants chip in to create Saudi Arabia’s AI hub

The Saudi giant partnered with Groq in a $1.5 billion deal to build AI-powered cloud computing capabilities and intends to sign agreements with other AI companies, Al-Khowaiter said.

Tech giants chip in to create Saudi Arabia’s AI hub

The Saudi giant partnered with Groq in a $1.5 billion deal to build AI-powered cloud computing capabilities and intends to sign agreements with other AI companies, Al-Khowaiter said.