Saudi Arabia is doing all the right things to capitalise on artificial intelligence with its technology literacy, digitisation push and a growing enthusiasm for data centres, but it should prepare to confront obstacles, experts say.
“If you look at AI preparedness, the country is quite advanced,” Amine Mati, the International Monetary Fund's mission chief to Saudi Arabia, said during a panel discussion at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington.
The event on Thursday focused on Saudi Arabia's efforts to sustain economic growth as geopolitical uncertainty increases in many parts of the world.
Toby Iles, chief economist for Jadwa Investment, also talked about Saudi Arabia's efforts to diversify its economy away from oil through the AI sector.
Mr Iles said the announcement of a new artificial intelligence company, Humain, in May – right before US President Donald Trump visited the country – helped provide a clear vehicle for Saudi Arabia to focus on achieving a return on AI investments.
US technology giants including Nvidia, Amazon Web Services and Advanced Micro Devices have announced that they planned to work with the Saudi Public Investment Fund to bolster Humain.
Saudi officials say it could eventually provide a range of AI services, products and tools, including data centres.
“They've started giving timelines for the data centres, so I think that's quite positive,” Mr Iles told The National during the Arab Gulf States Institute event.
He added that Saudi Arabia has continued to advertise itself as a host for data centres because of an abundance of available space and energy.
Mr Iles cautioned, however, that AI prosperity is not a sure thing, and that obstacles remain as countries compete for talent and engineers.
Fears have also increased that strict export controls might make it harder for powerful graphics processing units (GPUs) to be imported to countries including Saudi Arabia.
“They might be getting stuck in terms of buying a lot of the equipment and hardware and getting it over there,” Mr Iles said. “It all remains very uncertain but there are some positive signs.”
Shortly after Humain was announced, US tech major Nvidia said it would offer Saudi Arabia several hundred thousand of its sought-after GPUs, as well as a Nvidia GB300 Grace Blackwell AI supercomputer.
Environmental issues could also present a stumbling block for Saudi Arabia's AI plans, because data centres need large amounts of water to stay cool.
Fears that an AI investment bubble might burst, though not unique to Saudi Arabia, also persist.
Even before the announcement of Humain in May, AI was considered to be a major component of Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 project, which focuses on social reform and economic diversification.
According to a 2025 report compiled by US technology company TRG Datacenters, Saudi Arabia ranks third in the world as an AI superpower, behind the UAE and US.
An IMF staff report from 2024 said that if AI is planned and implemented successfully, it could make up 12 per cent of Saudi Arabia's gross domestic product by 2030.
