Saudi Arabia is launched into the conquest of the Artificial Intelligence (AI)entering fully into the battle to lead one of the most promising businesses of the moment. The country, whose economy continues to depend largely on oil, has been looking to diversify its sources of income for years. A key piece of this ambitious plan is neom, A futuristic city that, for now, resembles more an industrial estatebut that aspires to become a luxury tourist destination and an innovation center.
Oxagon, the city’s industrial center, will be the headquarters of a huge 1.5 Gigaw Data Center. Until now, most of the language models we use have been trained in infrastructure that operated on the megawatt scale, but the industry is stepping on the accelerator towards the gigawatts. There are the projects announced by goal and Oracle To prove it. This runaway growth is also exerting pressure on the energy sector of many countries.
A “sustainable” project raised in several stages
According to a statement released this weekthe Saudi Datavolt company will be in charge of leading the works. It is not yet clear if they will begin this year, but it has been confirmed that the data center will be built in phases. The initial investment, of 5,000 million dollarswill allow operations to start in 2028. From then on, the capital flow is expected to continue and that the works continue to advance until reaching the expected power, all under a “sustainable” approach.
The announcement indicates that the data center will have “an integrated high density computer ecosystem and an energy efficient infrastructure.” One of the promises of the NEOM is sustainability. The government has promised that it aims to produce “100% clean” energy from sources such as solar energy, wind energy and the largest hydrogen plant in the world. It is no secret that they will need a lot of energy to boost this and other AI data centers in the place.
The International Energy Agency (AIE) He has indicated thatin 2022, the global electricity consumption of the data centers was between 1 % and 1.3 %, and everything indicates that it will continue to increase significantly in the next decade. This scenario is promoting a Resurgence of nuclear energya source capable of satisfying the needs of large data centers and doing it stable. Now, it remains to be seen if Saudi Arabia, that still does not have nuclear plantsHe will advance in his plans.
As Datavolt has pointed out, the project aims to turn Saudi Arabia into a regional reference in digital innovation and artificial intelligence. However, it is not the only country in the Middle East that aspires to lead this technological career. United Arab Emirates is also betting strongly in that regard, and proof of this is its recent multimillionaire investment To lift in France a 1 Gigavatio AI data center, part of the largest AI campus in Europe. Images | Neom | Datavolt