The relationship between Elon Musk and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has eered a new phase. The two, who previously worked closely together during the acquisition of Twitter (now X), now plan to revolutionize the world’s artificial ielligence infrastructure. Elon Musk announced at the US-Saudi Investme Forum that his artificial ielligence startup, xAI, is planning a 500 MW data ceer build in Saudi Arabia.
According to the New York Times, this facility will be the world’s largest data ceer outside of the United States. This project is implemeed in the form of a joi collaboration between xAI and the Saudi governme artificial ielligence startup Humain. Nvidia will also be responsible for providing the processors of this ceer. This agreeme is part of a larger cooperation package between American and Saudi companies.
Extensive cooperation between Elon Musk and Saudi Arabia
This cooperation is considered a win-win deal for the parties, which is rooted in their mutual needs; Elon Musk needs huge infrastructure to develop Grok chatbot and compete with OpenAI. He previously built a 300 megawatt data ceer in Memphis, but the Saudi project is much larger in scale. Saudi Arabia provides him with the land, abunda energy and fiber optic infrastructure necessary for rapid developme.
On the other hand, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is trying to save its economy from dependence on oil and become a technology hub. Humain’s goal is to manage 6% of the world’s artificial ielligence processing in the coming years, and the construction of this data ceer is a big step in this direction.
Currely, US export restrictions preve the sale of Nvidia’s most advanced chips to Saudi Arabia. But it seems that with political changes in the White House, these obstacles will be removed. “Tareq Amin”, the head of Humain, has pledged not to cooperate with Chinese companies such as Huawei in order to gain the trust of the Trump administration. The new US governme is expected to issue the necessary permits to help the company achieve its goal of installing 400,000 artificial ielligence chips by 2030.
