A Google-commissioned survey in Saudi Arabia found that more than half the respondents use at least one AI tool.
The company has been contributing to upskilling the kingdom’s workers, with 590,000 Saudis passing through its “Maharat Min Google” program since 2018. Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 includes a goal to train more than 100,000 AI specialists by the end of the decade, aligning with a national AI strategy focused on large language models, health care diagnostics, and industrial automation.
In October, Google and the Public Investment Fund said they would establish an AI hub in Dammam focused on Arabic-first large language models, cloud infrastructure, and public-sector tools. A Google executive told Semafor this week, however, that the project hasn’t begun yet. Even without the latest data center, Google estimates that its tools added 31.2 billion Saudi riyals ($8.3 billion) to the kingdom’s economy last year.