Saudi Arabia and UAE: The AI Superpowers You Can't Ignore (www.jp-globaladvisors.com)

A new analysis by a U.S. data‑center firm has put the UAE and Saudi Arabia firmly among the world’s top three AI superpowers alongside the United States, driven by massive compute, capital and coordinated national strategies. TRG Datacenters’ ranking credits the UAE with 23.1 million H100‑equivalent chips and 6,400 MW of power capacity, and Saudi Arabia with 7.2 million chips and 2,400 MW — figures that outpace South Korea, France, India, China, the UK and Germany on raw AI compute. The rise reflects deliberate moves: the UAE’s 2017 Ministry of AI, MBZUAI, a planned 5‑GW US‑UAE AI campus and a 1‑GW sovereign “Stargate” cluster with OpenAI partnership; mandatory AI education from kindergarten; and Saudi Arabia’s $100B Project Transcendence, PIF investments, the Humain Arabic‑LLM program with AMD/Nvidia and multibillion‑dollar deal flow announced at LEAP. Stanford’s AI Index also ranks the UAE highly for vibrancy and Saudi for rapid AI hiring growth. This shift matters technically and geopolitically. Concentrated compute and sovereign supercomputing clusters create independent capabilities for training large models, hosting cloud services, and developing Arabic‑language AI, while regulatory frameworks and deep pockets attract global R&D. Economically, Saudi projects target AI contributing up to 12% of GDP by 2030; strategically, control over infrastructure and talent gives these states leverage in defense, cybersecurity and global AI supply chains. For researchers, startups and policymakers, the Gulf’s trajectory signals new funding, data and compute hubs—and a reordering of where cutting‑edge AI will be built and governed.