JEDDAH: The president of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), Gabriela Cuevas Barron, has praised Saudi efforts to promote joint action with the international community on Arab, Islamic and international issues.
Following her meeting with Dr. Abdullah Al-Asheikh of the Saudi Shoura Council, as part of her current visit to the Kingdom, Barron said that the IPU sees Saudi Arabia as an important partner for progress, especially given its role as a leading provider of global energy.
She also stressed that the Kingdom is an important player in countering international extremism, and that Saudi Arabia is among the most vociferous supporters of the IPU and its agenda.
Barron said that the world is facing serious challenges and needs more sound and sensible voices that believe in reason, dialogue and joint action under the umbrella of IPU.
Al-Asheikh highlighted the importance of these meetings in promoting joint action between the Shoura Council and IPU to strengthen the Shoura Council’s role in this important inter-parliamentary forum, reflecting the Kingdom’s international status and convey its views on many regional and international issues.
Barron thanked Al-Asheikh for his continued support for the work of IPU, stressing the need for combining the efforts of the different parliamentary councils to promote cooperation between states.
During the meeting, they discussed a number of topics that target improving cooperation between the Shoura Council and IPU.
Barron also met with several other politicians and dignitaries at the meeting in Riyadh.
The IPU is a global forum for parliamentarians, with 178 members that meet annually to discuss global issues.
‘Saudi Arabia an important partner for stable, prosperous world’ — President of IPU
‘Saudi Arabia an important partner for stable, prosperous world’ — President of IPU
- The IPU is a global forum for parliamentarians, with 178 members that meet annually to discuss global issues
- Gabriela Cuevas Barron stressed that Saudi Arabia is an important player in countering international extremism, and that the Kingdom is among the most vociferous supporters of the IPU and its agenda
Leading AI company to partner with Saudi Arabia, CEO tells Arab News
- Argentum’s Andrew Sobko: ‘Very easy’ to build new infrastructure, data centers in Kingdom
- In 2024, Saudi Arabia announced $100bn plan to establish AI hub
CHICAGO: The founder and CEO of Argentum AI, one of the world’s leading artificial intelligence companies, has told Arab News that he is looking forward to partnering with Saudi Arabia.
Ukrainian-born Andrew Sobko, based in Chicago, said Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has made a significant commitment to AI use.
In 2024, Saudi Arabia announced a $100 billion plan under Vision 2030 to build a hub to develop technology and data centers to handle a significant portion of the world’s AI workload.
The Kingdom reportedly expects AI to contribute more than $135.2 billion to its gross domestic product by 2030, representing roughly 12.4 percent of its economy.
“The US still is the kind of core leader of this AI innovation, development and infrastructure, but we quickly realized that Saudi Arabia sees this as an important asset class, not just as an innovation,” Sobko said.
“They’re deploying tons of capital. If you try to build some new infrastructure or data center, it’s very easy to do it in Saudi Arabia,” he added. “Saudi Arabia realizes and sees this compute as almost like a second asset class after oil.”
The term “compute” refers to the process of calculations that fuels AI development and applications in everyday use.
“The Middle East wants to be one of the largest exporters of compute. They realized that a couple of years ago and they’re aggressively expanding,” Sobko said, adding that AI is being used more and more in industries such as sports, in which Saudi Arabia has invested heavily.
Argentum AI recently added Majed Al-Sorour, CEO of the Saudi Golf Federation, to its board.
“Majed is also a huge believer in AI and AI infrastructure,” said Sobko. “With the help of Majed, we’re focusing on global expansion. He’s leading charge on that.”
Sobko said the challenge is not simply recognizing the importance of AI, but the ability to power data centers that it requires, and Saudi Arabia recognizes that need.
“If you secure a significant amount of power and you have data center capacity, you can actually control this kind of compute and AI,” he added.
“And the biggest bottleneck to continue expanding as we enter into this new age of robotics industry, it needs a lot more compute.”
Following meetings with US leadership, including President Donald Trump last November, Saudi Arabia secured agreements on AI technology transfers, aiming to avoid reliance on other nations’ systems.
