The Saudi Arabian government, in partnership with tech giants, is set to invest $14.9 billion in artificial intelligence and cloud computing projects. The announcement was made by the Minister of Information and Communications Technology, Abdullah bin Amer Al-Swaha.

Among the collaborating firms are Google Cloud, Lenovo, Alibaba Cloud, Qualcomm, Groq, Salesforce, and others.

During his speech, Ahmad Al-Khowaiter, Executive Vice President for Technology and Innovation at Saudi Aramco, emphasized that businesses in Saudi Arabia must scale up in the AI sector through strategic partnerships.

According to CompaniesMarketCap, Aramco is the world’s seventh-largest company by market capitalization, valued at $1.79 trillion.

Al-Khowaiter stated that the Saudi oil giant has signed a $1.5 billion partnership with Groq to deploy AI-powered cloud computing. Aramco also plans to secure additional agreements with other AI companies in the future.

Saudi manufacturing giant Alat and Lenovo have announced a $2 billion investment to build a local facility focused on AI and robotics. As part of the deal, Lenovo will establish its regional headquarters in Riyadh.

Google, Qualcomm, and Alibaba Cloud have also announced various AI initiatives in Saudi Arabia.

Additionally, Salesforce, Databricks, Tencent Cloud, and SambaNova have committed investments of $500 million, $300 million, $150 million, and $140 million, respectively, into the country’s technological infrastructure.

In March 2024, reports suggested that Saudi Arabia was preparing to launch a $40 billion fund for AI investments in collaboration with venture firm Andreessen Horowitz.