As much as $6.4bln Investment, to be Pumped into the Future Technologies,

Saudi Arabia has launched investments worth $6.4 billion, in future technology, as it seeks to diversify its economy, away from oil, the Saudi Minister of Communications and Information Technology Abdullah Al-Sawaha announced.

Today declared investments include a joint venture worth $2 billion among EWTP Arabia Capital, a fund backed by the Public Investment Fund, and Alibaba and J&T Express Group of China, he remarked.

It is noteworthy, that the Saudi oil giant Aramco, through its Prosperity7 Ventures fund, will inject $1 billion to help entrepreneurs around the world build start-ups, he added, pointing that the aim is to serve the goals of technology transformation, while the Saudi Telecom company will invest $1 billion, for its part, in submerged cable infrastructure and data centers.

“Currently, the volume of the technology and digital market, in the Kingdom is about $40 billion, which is the largest in the region,” Al-Sawaha explained, in an interview with Reuters.

We are very proud of the growth we have seen in the region, specifically in the areas related to e-commerce, digital and cloud content,” he commented.

Speaking on the sidelines of Leap, an international technology platform, held in Riyadh, the minister added that the Aramco Prosperity 7 initiative will focus on green technologies, while the joint venture of logistics company J&T Express Group will build a smart hub for the region, that will improve efficiency, by up to 100 percent.

NEOM, the mega-future city that Saudi Arabia is building on the Red Sea coast, has launched a $1 billion of investments related to simulating a digital environment that uses augmented reality, or what is known as metaverse, to serve its residents and visitors, in addition to another platform that will help users control, in their personal data.

“Over the next 8-year, we expect creating at least 100,000 to 250,000 additionally related jobs, which would effectively mean twice as many programmers as we have today, and in some cases tripled,” he added.

The government also expects to spend $1.4 billion on entrepreneurship and allocate funds to support digital content, including an initiative known as the Garage, an area in the capital Riyadh that will host startups specializing, in modern technologies, he elaborated.

“All pronounced and uttered figure were checked and verified by 3rd parties,” the minister stated.

Once again, we are not talking about reviews, rather we are revisiting a matter of commitment and implementation, he concluded.