Saudi Arabia says tech giants to invest more than US$9b in kingdom
SAUDI Arabia has attracted more than US$9 billion in investments in future technologies, including by US giants Microsoft and Oracle, which are building cloud regions in the kingdom, said a government minister on Monday (Feb 6).
Saudi Minister of Communication and Information Technology Abdullah Alswaha said that Microsoft will invest US$2.1 billion in a global super-scaler cloud, while Oracle has committed US$1.5 billion to build a new cloud region in Riyadh.
“The investments... will enhance the kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s position as the largest digital market in the Middle East and North Africa,” he said at Leap, an international technology forum taking place in Riyadh.
Alswaha did not give details on the timeframe. Oracle said that the investment will be made over several years.
Saudi officials have pressed international companies to invest in the kingdom, and move their regional headquarters to Riyadh, in order to benefit from government contracts.
The kingdom has been pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into an economic plan, known as Vision 2030, led by its de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
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But it has struggled to attract foreign direct investment, one of the pillars of Vision 2030, which aims to diversify the economy away from oil.
Alswaha said that China’s Huawei will also invest US$400 million in cloud infrastructure for its services in Saudi Arabia and another cloud region, in partnership with the kingdom’s oil giant Aramco.
An additional US$4.5 billion was invested in global and local assets across multiple sectors at the forum, he added.
Tonomus, a subsidiary of the US$500-billion signature Neom project of the crown prince, said last year that it invested US$1 billion that year in AI, including a metaverse platform.
Increased demand for cloud computing has pushed technology companies such as Oracle, Microsoft, Amazon and Alphabet’s Google to set up data centres across the world, to speed up data transfer. REUTERS
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