RIYADH: Saudi Arabia is entering one of the biggest technology infrastructure shifts since the rise of cloud computing, with data centers set to evolve into artificial intelligence factories, a senior NVIDIA executive told Arab News.
Marc Domenech, vice president enterprise for Middle East, Turkey, and Africa and Southern Europe at the US-based multinational technology firm, said traditional facilities built to store, process and distribute information are evolving into infrastructure designed to generate intelligence at scale as organizations accelerate adoption of generative and agentic AI.
Saudi Arabia has accelerated investments in AI and digital infrastructure under Vision 2030 while attracting commitments from global technology companies.
According to the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, investments in the Kingdom’s data center sector have exceeded SR16 billion ($4.26 billion) since 2016.
“We’re witnessing one of the most significant infrastructure transformations since the advent of cloud computing. For decades, data centers were built to process, store and distribute information. Today, they are evolving into AI factories — purpose-built infrastructure that generates intelligence at scale.” Domenech told Arab News.
Marc Domenech
NVIDIA has also expanded its presence in the Kingdom, and in 2025 it announced partnerships with Saudi Arabia to advance AI, cloud and enterprise computing, digital twins and robotics.
At the time, the company’s founder and CEO Jensen Huang said the initiative would leverage sovereign AI infrastructure and expertise to help position Saudi Arabia among the world’s leading hyperscale AI economies.
NVIDIA, whose chips have become central to the global AI boom, has a market value of about $4.86 trillion, making it one of the world’s most valuable publicly traded companies. Its shares trade near $200.75.
AI factories
Domenech believes the rapid adoption of generative and agentic AI is driving one of the biggest shifts in digital infrastructure in decades.
“Organizations are no longer asking whether to adopt AI; they’re asking how quickly they can integrate it into every business function, product and customer experience,” he said, adding: “Meeting that demand requires an entirely new computing architecture designed specifically for AI.”
Domenech explained that AI factories provide enterprises with the foundation to move AI from experimentation into production, allowing them to train, fine-tune and deploy models securely and efficiently at scale.
He said the same infrastructure enables cloud providers to deliver a new generation of AI services to organizations of every size, while giving developers, researchers and startups access to accelerated computing, networking and AI software needed to innovate faster.
According to Domenech, infrastructure alone is not enough to unlock AI’s full potential.
He said long-term impact comes from combining world-class computing, software, talent and an open innovation ecosystem where enterprises, cloud providers, researchers and entrepreneurs can collaborate and scale new ideas.
“That’s where AI begins to transform industries — not just through more powerful technology, but through entirely new ways of solving problems, accelerating discovery and creating economic value,” Domenech said.
He added that Saudi Arabia’s continued investment in digital infrastructure, AI innovation and talent development reflects the broader global shift toward AI becoming a foundational capability across sectors.
Accordingly, economies that combine advanced infrastructure with vibrant innovation ecosystems will be best positioned to unlock the next wave of productivity, competitiveness and sustainable growth.
The executive said AI factories differ fundamentally from conventional data centers, which are designed to store, process and deliver information.
“AI factories are designed to produce intelligence,” Domenech added.
Building AI factories requires every layer of the computing stack to work together, from applications and models to platforms, accelerated computing, networking and the underlying infrastructure, he said.
Optimizing a single component is no longer enough because modern AI workloads require massive parallel processing, ultra-fast networking, high-performance storage and software capable of orchestrating millions of simultaneous computations efficiently.
Domenech said AI factories will increasingly become production engines that generate tokens, predictions, recommendations, simulations and autonomous decision-making as agentic AI becomes more capable.
“They are not simply larger data centers,” he told Arab News. “They represent an entirely new category of digital infrastructure purpose-built for the age of AI.”
“AI is a full-stack challenge. Accelerated computing, networking, storage and software all need to work together as a unified system to move AI efficiently from development into production.”
Accelerated computing provides the computational foundation, but high-speed networking, intelligent storage, optimized software and orchestration platforms are equally important because every component must operate as a unified system, he said.
Domenech noted that AI models are becoming larger, reasoning capabilities are becoming more sophisticated and inference is rapidly emerging as one of the industry’s largest computing workloads. As a result, organizations need infrastructure designed to scale efficiently from development through deployment, he added.
“Enterprises increasingly want the flexibility to build AI using open models while maintaining security, governance and interoperability. That’s why NVIDIA joined the Open Secure AI Alliance, helping advance open, secure and interoperable AI ecosystems.”
Efficiency has also become a defining performance metric, according to Domenech. He said organizations are increasingly measuring infrastructure not only by computing capacity but by how much intelligence they can generate from every watt of energy, every networking connection and every software optimization across the technology stack.
Beyond infrastructure
Domenech said history shows breakthrough technology ecosystems are never built through infrastructure alone.
“Infrastructure creates opportunity, but people create innovation,” he told Arab News.
He said developers build applications that bring AI into everyday use, while universities and research institutions push the boundaries of what is possible.
Startups translate breakthrough ideas into commercial solutions, while established enterprises bring AI into industries at scale, he added.
According to Domenech, innovation accelerates when those communities collaborate.
He pointed to NVIDIA Inception, through which startups including Aidera and Avey gain access to technical expertise, AI development resources and global networks designed to accelerate innovation.
Domenech added that collaborations involving research institutions, cloud providers and enterprise leaders create an environment where ideas can move more quickly from research into real-world deployment.
“No single company builds an AI economy,” he said. “Strong ecosystems are built through open collaboration, shared innovation and long-term investment in people as much as technology.”
Looking ahead, Domenech said AI factories will redefine rather than replace cloud infrastructure.
“We’re entering an era where every enterprise will increasingly operate two factories: one that produces the products or services it has always delivered, and another that produces intelligence”.
The transformation will extend beyond technology into healthcare, industrial automation, financial services, scientific research and robotics.
He added that intelligence will increasingly become a resource organizations produce, refine and deploy much as they manage energy, manufacturing or logistics today.
“The organizations that will lead in the years ahead won’t simply be those with the most data or the largest infrastructure footprint. They will be the ones that can transform data into intelligence faster, more efficiently and more securely. That’s the promise of AI factories, and why they are becoming the foundation of the next generation of digital infrastructure,” Domenech said.
