Riyadh - Sharikat Mubasher: The Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) signed a strategic partnership agreement with Google Cloud during the 8th edition of the Future Investment Initiative (FII8) to establish a new global artificial intelligence (AI) hub in Saudi Arabia, capitalizing on Google Cloud’s existing presence in the Kingdom.
A recent statement revealed that the new state-of-the-art AI hub, located in Dammam, is expected to generate thousands of job opportunities and increase the national gross domestic product (GDP) by $71 billion over the next eight years.
The partnership aims to upskill the Saudi workforce through AI programs for millions of students and professionals, supporting the national objective of growing the information and communication technology (ICT) sector by 50%.
Customers will be able to use Google Cloud’s technology to support growth across industries and increase capacity for the delivery of AI applications.
The partnership also features joint research on Arabic language models as well as Saudi-specific AI applications.
The new infrastructure hub will include the newest tensor processing unit (TPU) and graphics processing unit (GPU) accelerators as well as the Vertex AI platform, Google Cloud’s specialized development platform that enables customers to build generative AI applications.
Yasir Al-Rumayyan, Governor of PIF, said: “This partnership demonstrates PIF’s dedication to fostering an AI-friendly environment through investments in human capital and technology, upskilling thousands with cutting-edge tools to support our sustainable and innovative infrastructure goals.”
On her part, Ruth Porat, President and Chief Investment Officer of Alphabet and Google, stated that the partnership will accelerate the adoption of AI in the local language and across industries, including healthcare, retail, and financial services.
She affirmed Google Cloud’s commitment to creating highly-skilled jobs for Saudis and opportunities for global businesses to fuel growth through cloud adoption
Moreover, PIF and Google Cloud will work together on enhancing the Arabic-language capabilities of Gemini, Google’s generative AI model family, by combining additional Arabic datasets with Google Cloud’s technology.
FII8 took place in Riyadh from 29 to 31 October, gathering world leaders, ministers, CEOs, investors, founders, and public policy experts in finance, sustainability, energy, geoeconomics, and space sectors.
