Now, those early bets are turning into a multibillion-dollar race to build the data centres, talent and computing power needed to make the region a serious contender in the global market.<\/p>\n
At the front of the AI race, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are going head-to-head. Saudi Arabia\u2019s Public Investment Fund (PIF), the kingdom\u2019s sovereign wealth fund strapped with more than $900 billion in assets, has already committed over $40 billion to AI-related ventures<\/a>.<\/p>\n At the centre of that push is Humain, a flagship platform designed to build out the country\u2019s AI infrastructure<\/a>. The UAE, which is leading in AI spending, allocated $355 million to AI hardware in 2025 alone<\/a>, and that figure is expected to reach $892 million by 2029.<\/p>\n \u201cThe drive comes from a simple recognition: oil alone can\u2019t sustain long-term economic growth of the Gulf states,\u201d says Mohammed Soliman<\/a>, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute and author of West Asia: A New American Grand Strategy in the Middle East, about the reason behind the Gulf investing so heavily in becoming an AI powerhouse.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re converting surplus capital, land and, above all, cheap energy into the scarce resource of this era, which is compute.\u201d<\/p>\n The Desert Thermal Trap<\/p>\n While the region has impressive ambitions, it also has a resource problem. All GCC countries face severe water insecurity<\/a> and rely heavily on energy-intensive desalination to meet basic water needs.<\/p>\n AI data centres<\/a> anywhere in the world pack thousands of GPUs into dense server racks, which generate intense heat as they process workloads. Keeping equipment from overheating requires constant cooling. Most large data centres use chilled-water systems and refrigeration towers, or air cooling that relies on evaporative technologies.<\/p>\n In the Gulf, that job is much harder<\/a>. Summer temperatures in Saudi Arabia and the UAE can exceed 45 degrees Celsius, with little relief at night, meaning systems have to work continuously to keep server temperatures within safe limits, which adds to both the energy and water consumption.<\/p>\n WIRED Middle East<\/a> explores how extreme heat is reshaping our bodies, cities and daily lives\u2013and what happens when nowhere is cool enough to recover.<\/p>\n Models like GPT-4<\/a> require enormous amounts of computing power, so running them takes rows of additional energy-hungry servers inside massive data centres. As their power demand climbs across the region, so does the pressure on water supplies.<\/p>\n A Middle East Institute report estimates that the UAE\u2019s AI sector alone could require roughly 61 billion litres of water a year by 2030<\/a>, while Saudi Arabia\u2019s data centre power demand is expected to grow by 29% annually.<\/p>\n![\"WIRED](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/DIGITALcov_AGO.jpg\"\/)
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