A day before Air Force One touched down in Riyadh to kick off US President Donald Trump’s three-country tour of the Gulf, Saudi Arabia made a pivotal announcement. The kingdom, long synonymous with oil, revealed a major investment in artificial intelligence (AI) through its newly launched company, HumAIn. This pivot, explicitly timed to coincide with Trump’s visit starting on May 13, and in anticipation of the signing of multiple tech deals between US and Gulf firms during the trip, signaled a profound shift in US-Saudi relations — from a traditional oil-for-security alliance to a partnership centered on AI and digital infrastructure. Saudi Arabia’s AI ambition is anchored in Vision 2030, the country’s strategy for economic diversification and social reform. Unveiled in 2016, Vision 2030 aims inter alia to reduce the kingdom’s dependency on oil, which has historically accounted for more than 40% of its GDP and 80% of export revenue. In place of petroleum exports, Riyadh envisions a digital economy powered by AI — positioning the kingdom as a global hub for compute infrastructure, the essential backbone for training models and powering inference at scale. Saudi Arabia’s strategy is to become the prime backend provider of compute-as-a-service for emerging markets across Africa and Asia.
Saudi Arabia’s AI ambition, and what it means for the United States | Middle East Institute