Economy

Saudi R&D growth fuelled by AI and green industries

December 2, 2024, 12:58 PM

Attendees at the GAIN AI summit in Riyadh in September. Aramco and Kaust are investing $100m into AI research — Attendees at the GAIN AI summit in Riyadh in September. Aramco and Kaust are investing $100m in AI research

R&D spending hit $6bn in 2023
86,000 employed in sector
Aramco and Kaust lead funding

Research and development spending in Saudi Arabia increased by 17.4 percent in 2023, and the number of people employed in R&D rose significantly.

Figures released by the General Authority for Statistics showed R&D spending of SAR22.6 billion ($6 billion) in 2023, up from SAR19.25 billion in 2022 and SAR14.5 billion in 2021.

The total number of employees and researchers also rose steadily, from just over 55,000 in 2021 to more than 86,000 in 2023. But three-quarters of people involved inn R&D in Saudi Arabia are working in government entities, despite efforts to promote the private sector.

Private sector funding was still high, at SAR9.3 billion in 2023, accounting for 41 percent of the total.

The economy contracted 0.8 percent in 2023 as a result of Opec+ oil output cuts but is forecast to grow by 1.5 percent this year and 4.6 percent in 2025. The government said the non-oil share of GDP passed 50 percent for the first time in 2023.

The state energy corporation Saudi Aramco and King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (Kaust), a private university, said in August they would invest $100 million in R&D projects.

The 10-year investment will support projects focused on energy transition, sustainability, materials innovation, upstream technologies and digital solutions, aiming for both environmental and commercial benefits.

In July, Google gave grants of $100,000 to Kaust for artificial intelligence (AI) research in multilingual and multimodal machine learning, and the development of large language models.

Saudi Arabia is trying to become a centre for AI and green industries as part of its bid to transform the economy under its Vision 2030 reform plan.