Saudi Arabia is poised to become a hotspot for artificial intelligence infrastructure, according to Groq CEO Jonathan Ross.
The Middle Eastern country is known for its vast energy resources and is home to major technology companies announcing infrastructure deals in the region. It is also part of the kingdom’s Vision 2030 strategy, which plans to diversify Saudi Arabia’s economy beyond oil.
Jonathan Ross, CEO of AI chip company Groq, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” in an exclusive interview at the Future Investment Initiative (FII) conference in Riyadh that Saudi Arabia could become a net exporter of data.
“One of the hardest things to export is energy. You have to move it, it’s physical, it costs money. Electricity, it’s very expensive to transport over transmission lines,” he said.
Data, by comparison, is “much cheaper to move,” he added. “So since the Kingdom has a lot of extra energy, the idea is to move the data here, calculate here, calculate the AI ​​here, and send the results.”
“What you don’t want to do is build a data center next to people, where it’s expensive for land, or where energy is already being used. You want to build it where it’s not, where there aren’t many people, where less energy is being used. And that’s the Middle East, so it’s an ideal place to build.”
The CEO added that the cost of running the chips in Saudi Arabia is “really cheaper than some of the Nordic countries,” which are known for their abundant access to low-cost renewable energy.
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