Saudi Arabia Highlights Shift to Sovereign AI
A conference in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) showcased what’s become a massively funded, multiyear effort to boost AI services out of that country—part of a "space race"-like trend among nations making AI an essential economic strategy.
Dubbed LEAP 2025, the event took place in Riyadh from February 9-12 and reportedly produced $22.4 billion in investment during its first two days. Organized by the Saudi Ministry of Communications and Information Technology; the Saudi Federation for Cybersecurity, Programming & Drones; and Tahaluf, an event-sponsoring company, the conference drew speakers such as IBM CEO Arvind Krishna; Aiden Gomez, the CEO and cofounder of Cohere; and Olivier Blum, CEO of Schneider Electric, to name just a few.
Groq’s Giant Plan
Among the deals done at LEAP was a $1.5 billion commitment by the KSA to expand the nation’s deployment of chips from Silicon Valley AI startup Groq, whose Language Processing Units (LPUs) compete with NVIDIA GPUs and other AI chips in inferencing. The commitment follows on a deal arranged last year between Groq and Aramco Digital, the technology arm of Saudi oil giant Aramco. That arrangement resulted in the buildout of a large inferencing datacenter in Dammam, KSA, last year.
Some things to know about Groq’s opportunity: As a subsidiary of Aramco, which is owned by the KSA, Aramco Digital has access to a rich source of funding. It also is part of the KSA’s plan to build out an AI-based economy by 2030, with the government itself offering AI services. And given the general drift of predictions for the growth of inferencing over the next few years, the KSA appears to be in line to tap a large potential opportunity.
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