Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries are investing heavily in artificial intelligence infrastructure while maintaining links to both American and Chinese technology providers. Rather than choosing one geopolitical camp, they are positioning themselves as places where both ecosystems can operate concurrently.
Specific investments and partnerships
- Amazon Web Services (AWS) has committed $5.3 billion to build data centers in Saudi Arabia.
- At this month’s LEAP conference in Riyadh, the state-backed HUMAIN unveiled Arabic-language technology built on China’s MiniMax model.
- HUMAIN is constructing its infrastructure using American technology and has agreed that Chinese frontier models will not be trained on compute capacity acquired under US export approvals.
- At the same time, Gulf connections to Chinese firms remain active: ByteDance’s cloud arm is building infrastructure in Riyadh, Tencent Cloud has secured a Saudi operating license, and Lenovo has released its first “Made in Saudi Arabia” laptop.
Infrastructure as strategic leverage
The Gulf region offers capital, energy, and land—resources that are essential for large-scale AI deployments. The ability to host vast data centers and power them gives these countries geopolitical flexibility. AI requires not only software but significant heavy-industry inputs: data centers, electricity, cooling and capital.
An illustrative project is DataVolt’s construction of an approximately $1 billion, 100-megawatt facility at NEOM intended to export compute, with ambitions to expand to 360 megawatts. Owning such infrastructure allows Gulf states to compete globally by controlling the physical layer on which others’ AI models run, and to use that control to attract investment, localization commitments and technology transfer.
Geopolitical implications
If Washington treats access to chips as a foreign-policy tool and Beijing uses open models to reach markets it cannot access via hardware, Gulf states are likely to pursue their own interests rather than choosing sides. This can produce swing states able to play both Washington and Beijing off each other to extract economic and strategic benefits, rather than a strict bipolar division.
The Gulf spent decades converting energy control into geopolitical leverage; it is now applying a similar playbook to compute.
Market signals
Chinese chipmakers are beginning to challenge Nvidia’s dominance. According to Nikkei, Shanghai Enflame Technology’s IPO was oversubscribed by 6,000 times, underscoring strong investor interest in China’s semiconductor sector.
