Is Saudi Arabia’s $24 Billion AI Blitz Turning Riyadh Into the Next Silicon Valley?
Inside LEAP 2025 and the Kingdom’s Bold Bid to Own the Rails of AI
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Saudi Arabia is no longer trying to catch up.
At LEAP 2025, the Kingdom announced over $24 billion in AI-related deals not just software bets or vaporware venture capital, but hard infrastructure: 1.5 GW data centers, AI chip partnerships, hyperscale cloud zones, and sovereign compute strategies.
This isn’t about headline deals.
It’s about a shift in power from West to Gulf.
What Happened at LEAP 2025
Over four days, Saudi Arabia transformed Riyadh into the world’s AI investment capital. 200,000+ visitors. 1,800 exhibitors. 680 startups.
But the real headline? $22.4B in deals, with a final tally closer to $24B when all pledges were counted.
And these weren’t just memoranda.
DataVolt–NEOM: $5B for a net-zero 1.5GW AI campus
Groq + Aramco Digital: $1.5B for the world’s largest inference cluster
ALAT + Lenovo: $2B to localize edge and AI server manufacturing
Equinix: $1B for its first GCC xScale data center
Salesforce, Tencent, Databricks: Hundreds of millions for sovereign cloud & PaaS plays
Saudi Arabia didn’t just invest in capacity it invested in control.
Such a sweeping consolidation strategy mirrors global trends see how major data center M&A activity is redefining infrastructure scale and control in Data Center Consolidation: Strategic Implications of the M&A Surge.
The Strategic Framework: “Sovereign-as-Platform”
The real story behind the $24B isn’t just size. It’s architecture.
Saudi Arabia is building a full-stack AI infrastructure ecosystem from chip and cloud to regulation and R&D but under sovereign direction.
Let’s call it “Sovereign-as-Platform”:
Compute: Gulf-funded hyperscale + AI-specialized silicon
Capital: PIF (sovereign wealth fund) as the lead VC + LP
Control: All data stays onshore, all vendors anchor locally
Collaboration: Strategic neutrality Google, Groq, Lenovo, Tencent, Aramco
It’s neither the U.S. open-market model nor China’s top-down command system. It’s a hybrid that may become the dominant approach for capital-rich nations.
This mirrors France’s own France–UAE effort explored in Can Mistral’s $1B AI Cloud Make France a Sovereign Superpower? where state-aligned funding anchors compute, compliance, and capital in a unified ecosystem.
From Megawatts to Influence
Consider this:
NEOM’s 1.5 GW facility will use 1.25 TWh/year — 2% of the Kingdom’s current generation
Groq’s LPU cluster will process billions of inference tokens daily
Lenovo will build 200,000 sqm of Saudi-made hardware capacity
Aramco Digital is turning petro-capex into AI yield curves
This is about transforming energy wealth into AI leverage.
Why This Matters
Saudi Arabia is doing what few nations can:
Compressing timelines: Meeting 2030 targets in a single event cycle
Exporting data, not oil: Becoming the regional default for compute, cloud, and compliance
Attracting everyone: Google, Alibaba, Salesforce, Equinix, Groq all in Riyadh
The long game?
Control the infrastructure, and you influence the platforms.
Control the platforms, and you shape the intelligence age.
Final Word
Saudi Arabia’s LEAP 2025 wasn’t a trade show.
It was a declaration of AI sovereignty poured in steel, powered by solar, and capitalized with oil revenue.
It’s not just Silicon Valley vs. Shenzhen anymore.
Riyadh is on the map.
And they brought $24 billion to prove it.