October 11, 2024 [Fierce Network]- Saudi Arabia’s Aramco Digital, the digital arm of the world’s largest oil producer, Aramco, is making moves to boost the country’s artificial intelligence (AI) ecosystem and help the country play a more significant role in the global AI industry.

Case in point: the business recently teamed with Groq to set up the world’s largest inferencing data center in Saudi Arabia.

According to a press release, “The facility will process billions of tokens per day by the end of 2024 and be able to onboard hundreds of thousands of developers in the region and then hundreds of billions of tokens per day with millions of developers by 2025, setting a new industry standard and bringing advanced technology from Groq to the Kingdom.”

Aramco Digital has also signed several Memorandums of Understanding (MoU) at the Global AI Summit held in Riyadh recently. It inked a deal with Cerebras Systems and FuriosaAI to explore collaboration in the supercomputing and AI domains and also partnered with South Korea’s Rebellions to deploy Rebellions Neural Processing Unit chips in Aramco’s data centers.

In addition, Aramco Digital has signed an MoU with SambaNova Systems to accelerate AI capabilities, innovation and adoption across the country. It also announced the deployment of an AI supercomputer powered by NVIDIA GPUs, one of the region’s first systems of its kind.

The deals come after Aramco Digital jumpstarted its AI efforts last year by hiring Tareq Amin, one of the industry’s most charismatic and visionary leaders, as its CEO.

The new collaborations and partnerships are all part of the Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 initiative to transition from an oil-based to a technology-based economy. This transition is driven by the realization that it is crucial for the country to build capabilities in new and advanced technologies as the global economy is becoming knowledge-based.

“This shift is not just about diversification but about securing the nation’s future in a rapidly evolving global economy,” said Hamza Naqshbandi, IDC’s Country Lead for Saudi Arabia.

“Strategic investments in AI will not only help diversify revenue streams but also future-proof the economy, creating new industries and job opportunities,” Naqshbandi continued. “Additionally, it will enhance Saudi Arabia’s global competitiveness, enabling it to play a larger role as a knowledge-based economy on the international stage.”

Already, the country has taken several steps to grow its AI capabilities, including creating the Saudi Data and AI Authority (SDAIA), which is responsible for the country’s overall AI strategy. As per media reports, the Saudi Arabia government is also planning to create a fund of around $40 billion to invest in AI.

Roadblocks: Talent and chips

However, Saudi Arabia faces a number of issues in its quest to play a bigger role in the growing AI ecosystem. A key challenge is that it lacks a vibrant tech industry, which means that developing AI talent will be a problem.

“The country remains heavily reliant on technology vendors that hail from abroad. The Kingdom has a long way to becoming a genuine AI enabler and not just an AI deployer. AI sovereignty will be a key focus of policymakers in the Kingdom,” Patel continued.

In addition, a U.S. ban on Saudi Arabia on sourcing advanced NVIDIA AI chips is a problem that can possibly thwart Saudi Arabia’s growing technology industry. The U.S. has imposed restrictions to prevent China from accessing AI chips. Still, the country is hopeful that it will be able to procure high-performance AI chips in the coming year.

“This is a problem, though it is increasingly becoming a grey area for even the U.S. vendors. The U.S. vendors want their chipsets to be sold to institutions and companies in Saudi Arabia and the wider region, but U.S. legislation is blocking the sale of high-end chipsets. If Saudi Arabia and its institutions and governments do not completely detach themselves from Chinese technology (which is what is happening in the UAE), this dynamic will continue,” Patel concluded.