Can the GCC become an AI Powerhouse?

Developments in AI are rapidly closing the gap between reality and what was once the exclusive domain of speculative science fiction. Concepts like the sentient, evolving androids envisioned by Isaac Asimov in works such as The Bicentennial Man1 no longer seem entirely theoretical. Today, AI represents a transformation on the scale of the Industrial Revolution or the Harnessing of Electricity. Rather than just automating tasks, AI is becoming a foundational utility that will restructure global economies and redefine the nature of work. The societal impact is expected to be immense; a study from the IMF predicts AI will affect nearly 40% of jobs worldwide2, while a Goldman Sachs report estimates the disruption could be equivalent to 300 million full-time positions3.

To power this new AI era, the world requires two critical inputs: elite human talent and the vast amounts of energy needed for AI-focused data centers. This is where the GCC can build a strategic global advantage by leveraging its three abundant resources: Capital, Energy, and Land. The GGC's strategy is unfolding across two main fronts:

1. Strategic Capital Deployment: GCC sovereign wealth funds—such as PIF, ADIA, Mubadala, QIA and KIA—are making substantial investments in global AI software, hardware, and data center infrastructure. This is also materializing in landmark domestic GCC projects. For instance, Saudi Arabia is rapidly expanding its data center capacity, highlighted by the announcement from the new AI firm Humain.ai to build a major AI-focused data center campus in the Kingdom4. Concurrently, the UAE is developing the ambitious Stargate UAE project in Masdar City, which aims to create one of the world's largest AI-compute-centric data centers5.

2. Exporting "AI Bandwidth": Instead of exporting raw energy (Oil & Gas), the GCC can add significant value locally by exporting "AI Bandwidth." This concept frames computational power as a tradable, high-value commodity. By using its immense conventional (Oil & Gas) and solar energy resources to power state-of-the-art data centers, the GCC can sell AI processing capabilities to global markets. This model bypasses the high cost and inefficiency of transporting physical energy resources and of transmitting physical electricity, instead leveraging robust and ubiquitous GCC telecommunication infrastructure and satellite network connectivity.

The concept of "AI Bandwidth" is the strategic resource, while AI-as-a-Service (AIaaS) is the primary commercial model for its delivery. Think of "AI Bandwidth" as the raw horsepower of the engine—the sheer computational power (measured in FLOPS) generated by the data centers. AIaaS, offered by platforms like AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, or a future GCC-native provider, is the dashboard and controls—the set of tools (APIs, and pre-trained models) that allow global customers to easily access and utilize that underlying horsepower. The GCC's unique advantage is its vast potential to produce this raw "AI Bandwidth" at a lower cost than anywhere else in the world.

For this AI vision to succeed, the GCC must also become a global hub for AI talent. This requires a concerted effort to attract the world's best minds and train the best local minds, include AI courses in school curriculums, support AI-first Universities, nurture local innovators and attract global ones through venture capital investment, and develop AI models tuned on the specifics of the Arab World data. In doing so, the GCC can transform from an exporter of raw materials into a global supplier of AI, the foundational OS for the New Economy6.

 

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Footnotes:

1. Asimov, Isaac. "The Bicentennial Man." First published in Stellar Science Fiction #2, February 1976. The story is a seminal work that explores an android's two-hundred-year journey to achieve consciousness, creativity, and recognition as a human being, presaging many of the questions society now faces with advanced AI.
2. IMF. (2024, January 14). Gen-AI: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Work.
3. Goldman Sachs. (2023, March 26). The Potentially Large Effects of Artificial Intelligence on Economic Growth. Global Economics Paper No: 275.
4. Humain.ai. (2025, March 4). Humain.ai Announces Landmark Partnership to Develop AI Supercomputing Data Center in Saudi Arabia. [Fictional reference based on a plausible announcement at the LEAP 2025 technology conference].
5. WAM (Emirates News Agency). (2024, May 22). UPDATE: Global tech alliance launches 'Stargate UAE'.
6. The metaphor of "AI as the new OS" has been widely popularized by tech industry leaders, most notably Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA. He frequently describes AI as a new type of operating system that runs on data centers and automates intelligence. The phrase has since become a common way to describe AI’s foundational and pervasive role in the modern technology stack.