One of the best places to view the Gulf states’ unfolding rivalry over artificial intelligence is inside an unmarked building in an industrial park near a golf course on the outskirts of Dubai. The windowless facility is cool and extraordinarily clean. Upon entering, guests step onto sticky blue floor mats designed to prevent stray sand particles from making their way inside. Like the scorching heat outside, any speck of desert dust could be hazardous to the multimillion-dollar equipment stored within.
The 23,648-square-foot complex opened in September, 18 months after construction began. It’s the fourth facility in the United Arab Emirates operated by Equinix Inc., a data center developer based in Redwood City, California. The company is also weighing expansion into neighboring Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia and the UAE both want to become the regional AI superpower, and their budding rivalry has kicked off a race to build expensive desert data centers to support the technology. Data centers alone won’t transform any country into an AI heavyweight, but no country can become one without them. Countries want the facilities within their borders for technological reasons—being close to customers can ease access to services and speed it up—and for geopolitical reasons, because the valuable data housed in the servers will be subject to local regulations and insulated from foreign meddling.
In Saudi Arabia, where the economy still relies heavily on hydrocarbons, AI tech is part of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s Vision 2030 strategy, which aims to identify new revenue sources. It has launched major research centers and ministries devoted to AI and produced large-language models similar to OpenAI Inc.’s ChatGPT, as has the UAE. And both counties are hoarding thousands of customized chips, according to the Financial Times. This week, Bloomberg reported that OpenAI chief executive officer Sam Altman recently met with government officials and investors in the UAE to discuss how the private sector can work with countries to support large-scale AI infrastructure.
In early March, Abu Dhabi announced an AI investment fund that could swell to $100 billion within a few years, and Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund is in talks with venture capital powerhouse Andreessen Horowitz about allocating as much as $40 billion to AI investments. “The region is business-friendly,” says Kamel Al-Tawil, Equinix’s managing director for the Middle East and North Africa. “The economy is strong. Power prices are stable. We’re seeing a lot of momentum.”
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