The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and Google Cloud recently announced a strategic partnership to create a new global artificial intelligence (AI) hub near Dammam, in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Region.
The partnership, signed during the eighth Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh, enhances Saudi Arabia’s status as a global AI hub and a top destination for enterprises and startups.
The AI center is expected to generate numerous jobs and contribute 71 dollars billion to Saudi Arabia’s GDP within the next eight years.
PIF and Google Cloud are set to offer AI training to millions of students and professionals, aiming to boost the country’s 50 percent growth in the ICT sector, the Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reported.
Google Cloud’s latest TPU and GPU accelerators, along with the Vertex AI platform, will be used to accelerate application development using existing models and tooling.
The agreement, subject to regulatory approvals, involves joint research on Arabic language models and Saudi-specific AI applications.
“This strategic partnership will accelerate the adoption of AI in the local language and across industries — including health care, retail, financial services and more — for enterprises and startups in Saudi Arabia, across the Middle East, Africa and around the world,” said Ruth Porat, president and chief investment officer of Alphabet and Google.
“As part of Saudi Arabia’s vibrant technology ecosystem, we aim to create highly skilled jobs for Saudis and provide opportunities for global businesses to drive growth through cloud adoption,” she added.
