Saudi Arabia has made no secret of its pivot to artificial intelligence in recent months, a trend reinforced last week during Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s high-profile visit to Washington, where AI partnerships and semiconductor deals took center stage. The shift reflects a broader recalibration of the economic agenda of Vision 2030. Although gigaprojects, such as Neom and Diriyah, remain flagship priorities, some have slowed amid tightening foreign direct investment, prompting Riyadh to double down on AI as a faster, more cost-efficient engine of transformation.

That strategy was evident last month in Riyadh at the annual gathering of the Future Investment Initiative (FII), where Humain, the Public Investment Fund–owned AI firm, dominated headlines, not the gigaprojects. Building on that momentum, the kingdom is now rolling out initiatives that merge AI with real estate development, two foundational pillars of Vision 2030, in an effort to build smarter, more sustainable and more data-driven urban infrastructure.

One example of this shift came at FII when Saudi developer Arabian Dyar announced a $100 million partnership with Google to apply AI and big-data analytics to property development and market intelligence. 

Another project at the forefront of this intersection is NeoCity, initially a start-up accelerator program launched in September by a consortium comprised of the investor Aya Zaghnin and Saudi real estate firms Aqar and Retal, with the idea of offering new companies resources, mentorship and access to its real estate network. The program is funded by the National Technology Development Program, a Saudi state agency.