Saudi Arabia has unveiled a sweeping economic acceleration programme that places artificial intelligence, clean energy, and advanced industries at the heart of the Kingdom’s Vision 2030 agenda, with the largest single capital allocation directed to AI infrastructure and a fivefold expansion of renewable generating capacity.
Economic officials in Riyadh said the strategy would mobilise SAR 184 billion (about $50 billion) for AI data centres, sovereign compute capacity, and applied research partnerships, while a parallel track expands the Kingdom’s renewable footprint through new utility-scale solar farms and grid-scale storage in the Eastern Province and the north-west.
Three new special economic zones are planned for advanced manufacturing, with incentives targeting battery technology, semiconductors, and biopharmaceuticals. The programme is expected to create 250,000 high-skill jobs over the decade, with dedicated training pipelines run in partnership with Saudi universities and international institutes.
The announcement builds on a run of giga-project milestones this year, from progress at NEOM and Diriyah to new industrial capacity around Riyadh and Jeddah, and officials framed the plan as the next stage in the Kingdom’s shift toward a diversified knowledge economy — calling AI “the new engine of growth.”
Analysts said the scale of the commitment underlines how central technology has become to Saudi economic planning, noting that the Kingdom now ranks among the largest public investors in AI infrastructure anywhere in the world.