🤖 xAI Moves Closer to Saudi Arabia

Riyadh – BETH

Elon Musk’s company xAI is in advanced talks to lease massive data center capacity in Saudi Arabia, as part of its efforts to expand infrastructure for training advanced AI models — in a region offering low-cost energy and political alignment.

🔻 Deal Highlights:

xAI is currently negotiating with two providers:

Humane: a Saudi-backed AI startup, offering a proposal with multi-gigawatt capacity.

A second company: offering a ready-to-deploy 200-megawatt facility.

The Humane proposal remains preliminary, as the startup — funded by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) — has yet to begin building the infrastructure it committed to.

📍 xAI’s goal is to scale up its data center capacity to compete with platforms like:

ChatGPT (OpenAI)

Claude (Anthropic)

Its main cluster in Memphis, Tennessee, known as Klustas, is described as the largest supercomputing hub in the world.

💸 Saudi Arabia & the Global AI Race

Global tech firms are expected to spend over $320 billion on AI development this year alone.

Meta and Cerebras both announced multi-billion-dollar investments in new AI data centers this week.

xAI itself is preparing a major fundraising round that could value the company between $170 and $200 billion.

🟢 Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) is expected to play a key strategic role in the upcoming funding round, signaling the Kingdom’s growing presence in the global AI equation.

🧠 BETH Insight:

This move represents a strategic pivot for Saudi Arabia in the tech arena:

Attracting major players through infrastructure and energy.

Reinventing its role in the post-oil digital economy.

Building deep technology alliances, beyond hosting — toward co-owning the future.

📌 BETH is watching closely: Could Saudi Arabia become the world’s next AI brain hub?