You can buy Nvidia H100s, but you can't buy a culture of innovation. The "Giga-Projects" are beautiful, expensive distractions from the real work.
Inspiration: The news that NEOM is being scaled back (after burning billions) and the realization that “Humain” is a venture capital firm disguised as an AI lab.
There is a fundamental misunderstanding in Riyadh: they believe innovation is a product you can buy off the shelf.
But innovation is a process, not a purchase.
Look at NEOM. The pitch was a sci-fi dream: a 170km linear city with no cars, powered by flying taxis and green hydrogen.
The reality? Recent reports indicate The Line has been scaled back from 170km to… 2.4km.
The lesson is brutal but necessary: You can throw $500 billion at the desert, but you can’t terraform reality without the underlying engineering talent and economic necessity to support it. It’s a “glamour project,” not a functional economy.
The “Humain” Illusion (CapEx vs. Product)
Look at Humain, the Kingdom’s flagship AI initiative. They are positioned as a leading AI lab.
But what have they shipped?
They announce investments. “We bought 10,000 GPUs.” “We partnered with Microsoft.”
Where is the model? Where is the API? Where is the user base?
Compare this to the Silicon Valley model. OpenAI shipped ChatGPT before they had a massive HQ. They built the product, then attracted the capital.
Saudi Arabia attracts the capital (oil money) and tries to buy the product. It’s the reverse of the innovation cycle.
The Oil Clock is Ticking
The Saudis aren’t stupid. They know the oil money has an expiration date. Vision 2030 is an acknowledgment of this mortality.
But they are falling into a trap. They are replacing “Oil Revenue” with “Investment Revenue” (PIF).
The problem is that PIF invests heavily in localized initiatives: tourism, local entertainment, real estate. These circulate money inside the Kingdom. They don’t create global export value.
To survive post-oil, they need to build products the world wants to buy (like Korea did with Samsung/Hyundai, or Taiwan with TSMC). You can’t export a theme park in Riyadh.
The Missing Foundation: Education & Research
Why does the US win?
It isn’t just money. It’s MIT, Stanford, CalTech. It’s DARPA. It’s a 50-year head start in basic science.
You cannot build a “Knowledge Economy” without a base layer of world-class research.
The Solution: Stop building glass towers. Start funding boring, 20-year research grants.
And stop thinking you can just import talent. You can’t build a sustainable ecosystem by paying mercenaries top dollar for 2-year contracts. You need to create an environment where the world’s best scientists want to live, raise families, and retire. That requires cultural liberalization and stability that money can’t buy.
Conclusion: The Hard Path
The “Giga-Projects” are vitamins—nice to have, flashy, but ultimately optional.
Saudi Arabia needs painkillers. They need to solve the hard, unglamorous problems of education, scientific research, and genuine manufacturing capability.
My Prediction: If they continue to treat innovation as a luxury good they can purchase, they will end up with the world’s most expensive ghost towns.