WORLD ECONOMIC JOURNAL
How Saudi Arabia is making its mark in the global AI leadership race
Adrien Henni is the founder of International Digital News , a tech news and research agency dedicated to the emerging tech scenes of Europe and Asia .
Based in Egypt , Hisham Allam covers politics , economics and societal issues . He is a corecipient of the Pulitzer Prize for his work on the Panama Papers .
By Hisham Allam in Cairo and Adrien Henni in Paris
S audi Arabia is moving with remarkable resolve and enormous resources towards its stated goal of becoming a global leader in the field of artificial intelligence . Over the past few years , a variety of initiatives were introduced — from new government bodies to investment vehicles to R & D and startup support programmes .
These efforts are reflected by the kingdom ’ s emergence in several international AI-related rankings . In the 2023 Tortoise classification , which covers 60 countries , Saudi Arabia claimed the top position for its AI Government Strategy and earned a spot in the top 20 for its infrastructure and operating environment . That same year , Stanford University ’ s International AI Index noted the Saudi Arabian public was among the most positively minded in the world about artificial intelligence .
PIONEERING STARTUPS
Artificial intelligence is not entirely new in Saudi Arabia . The past decade saw the emergence of a first generation of locally-based startups involved in AI developments . Among them were Lucidya , founded in 2015 , with its AI-powered customer experience management software ; Mozn , established in 2017 , offering solutions to enhance risk intelligence and compliance processes , as well as Arabic NLP products ; and Tachyon , launched that same year , whose cloud platform uses blockchain and machine-learning ( ML ) algorithms to optimise transport and logistics operations . ( As of July 2024 , Tracxn identified 116 Saudi startups in the AI realm .)
The government ' s first major action occurred in 2018 when Saudi Arabia pledged $ 45 billion — yes , billions , not millions — to SoftBank ’ s Vision Fund . Primarily , though not exclusively , focused on AI , this massive global technology fund has invested in notable companies such as Arm , Automation Anywhere , Cruise , and Nvidia .
But Saudi Arabia has stopped seeing itself merely as a source of funding . It now seeks to build its own tech industry , backing local ventures and requiring international companies to operate within the country .
In 2019 , the government established the Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority ( SDAIA ). This organisation describes itself as " the national authority on all matters related to the organisation , development and management of data and AI ."
THE RUSH
Over the past two years , Saudi Arabia ' s efforts to build a domestic AI industry dramatically intensified . In May 2023 , in collaboration with New Native , a US-based AI business and technology platform , the authorities launched GAIA , promoting it as a world-class generative AI startup accelerator . The initiative set an ambitious goal of es-
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