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Saudi Arabia And UAE Join The Global Rush For AI Dominance

As operational expenses for AI soar, the race is on to purchase as many high-performance Nvidia chips as possible.

Published

3 years ago

August 16, 2023

saudi arabia and uae join the global rush for ai dominance

The United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia are now part of the global race to buy up thousands of Nvidia A100 and H100 chips, two of the company’s high-performance processors, due to their pivotal role in Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) development.

The Nvidia H100 chip, with a massive price tag of $40,000, is the world’s first processor designed specifically for GenAI. Saudi Arabia already has a stash of over 3,000 of the chips at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Meanwhile, the UAE has access to thousands of Nvidia processors and has even developed a unique large language model, known as Falcon, at the Technology Innovation Institute.

The ongoing global chip shortage is contributing to the scarcity and pricing of the processors, and the total cost for server infrastructure is expected to exceed $76 billion by 2028. OpenAI, the leading player in the field, currently runs ChatGPT on a cloud infrastructure costing millions of dollars per day to run. At the same time, the massive amounts of computing power required by these AI systems is also responsible for driving up energy consumption and other related expenses.

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The global scramble for high-performance Nvidia chips reflects AI’s pivotal role in shaping modern, digital-first economies. The ambitions of Saudi Arabia and the UAE to play leading roles in AI development come at significant financial costs and underscore the need for highly efficient computing methods. The development of AI involves not only scientific innovation but also careful attention to the ethical and environmental implications of the technology.

One thing is for sure: As the AI arms race gathers pace, striking a balance between technological advancement and social and environmental responsibility will become paramount.

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At I/O 2026, Sundar Pichai Concedes AI Must Deliver Real Value

Gemini 3.5, a personal agent called Spark, agentic shopping, and Android XR eyewear are all aimed at making AI feel useful, not just impressive.

Published

6 days ago

May 20, 2026

Nour Nasir

at io 2026 sundar pichai concedes ai must deliver real value

Google

Google’s annual I/O developer conference (I/O 2026) has recently become a status update on the same question: can the company turn its AI spending into products people use every day? This year, chief executive Sundar Pichai described Google as being in a phase of hyper progress, while conceding this is the part of the cycle where people want to see real value in the products they use on a day-to-day basis.

The strategy on display was to push agents — AI systems that act on a user’s behalf — into nearly every Google product at once. Search now has an “intelligent search box” that returns generated explainer videos alongside links. Gmail, Docs, YouTube and Maps are gaining their own agent layers, including a Docs Live feature that turns spoken instructions into drafted text with citations.

Two new models, Gemini 3.5 and a cheaper Gemini 3.5 Flash, arrived the same day. Google says 900 million people now use Gemini, and that more than 50 billion images have been generated with it. The pricing tier names are likely to confuse buyers: a new AI Ultra plan launches at $100 a month, while the older Gemini AI Ultra drops from $250 to $200.

The flashier announcements were Gemini Omni, a video generator pitched as a more realistic answer to OpenAI’s discontinued Sora 2, and Gemini Spark, a personal agent that handles recurring tasks across a user’s Google account. A new universal shopping cart lets agents complete purchases across multiple retailers from inside Google itself, placing the company between the merchant and the buyer, and also owning the checkout.

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Google also confirmed its Android XR eyewear, built with Samsung and frames from Warby Parker and Gentle Monster. Audio-only glasses ship this autumn; a display-equipped version, which would superimpose live translations into the wearer’s field of view, is still in development. Both sets translate, however only the display version shows you the result.

What Pichai did not resolve is the bargain underneath all this. An agent is only useful to the degree it knows your calendar, your inbox, your shopping history and your physical surroundings. Google has now confirmed that, in time, the same context may carry advertising.