6.5 Middle East — Silicon Gardens

Silicon Gardens: How the desert became an artificial intelligence laboratoryIn 2017, the United Arab Emirates appointed Omar Al Olama as Minister of Artificial Intelligence. He was thirty years old. It was a world first.This was not a symbolic gesture. It was a declaration of intent.In 2019, MBZUAI became the first university in the world entirely dedicated to AI. In 2022, Falcon LLM proved the Emirates could compete with giants. In 2024, Microsoft invested one and a half billion dollars in G42, the Emirati champion. AI could contribute ninety-six billion dollars to the Emirati economy by 2030.Israel, for its part, remained the "startup nation." Wiz reached twelve billion dollars in valuation. Nvidia acquired Run:ai. Ilya Sutskever, co-founder of OpenAI, opened a laboratory in Tel Aviv.Saudi Arabia invested hundreds of billions in NEOM — a futuristic city piloted by AI.The desert has bloomed. Silicon gardens are transforming yesterday's oil into tomorrow's data.