H.E. Alswaha & David Sacks | Saudi–US AI Partnership & the Future of Innovation at #SaudiUSForum2025

Summary

The discussion between H.E. Alswaha and David Sacks centers on the evolving relationship and partnership between Saudi Arabia and the United States, particularly in the realm of AI and technological innovation. The talk highlights Saudi Arabia’s impressive strides in empowering women in the tech industry and transitioning from an energy-based to a digital economy. Key topics include the innovative use of generative AI in healthcare, the importance of ecosystem building in tech, and the need for diffusion rather than restriction of AI technologies for mutual advancement. The importance of strategic partnerships, illustrated through AI endeavors and technology diffusion, underscores the mutual benefits for both nations in achieving technological growth and innovation.

Highlights

• Saudi Arabia’s tech sector is actively fostering female entrepreneurship, gaining international recognition. 🌟
• The partnership with the US aims to transition both countries towards a vibrant digital economy. 🔗
• Generative AI is being pioneered for significant healthcare advances, reducing treatment costs drastically. 💡
• Creating a tech ecosystem without legal barriers encourages innovation and broad adoption. 📈
• Emphasis is placed on nurturing strategic partnerships to expand technological capabilities globally. 🤝

Key Takeaways

• Saudi Arabia is making impressive strides in empowering women in tech, showcasing a significant percentage of female entrepreneurs. 💪🏽
• The partnership between Saudi Arabia and the US is pivotal in transitioning from an energy-based to a digital economy. 🚀
• Innovations in generative AI, notably in healthcare, demonstrate the transformative potential of AI technologies in improving lives. 🧬
• Building robust tech ecosystems is essential for both countries to foster innovation and establish technological leadership. 🌐
• Diffusion of technology should be prioritized over restrictions to facilitate global tech advancement and partnerships. 🔄

Overview

Saudi Arabia is emerging as a global leader in tech innovation, with a special emphasis on empowering female entrepreneurs. With initiatives focused on transitioning from traditional energy reliance to a burgeoning digital economy, the country is setting new standards in technological progress. A recent forum highlighted these developments, receiving commendation for Saudi Arabia's forward-thinking approach to include more women in tech roles.

The Saudi-US partnership is marked by a shared vision of advancing AI technologies and creating robust ecosystems that invite global participation. By leveraging their strengths, both nations are working towards not only fostering innovation but also ensuring that technological advancements are accessible and impactful. This partnership is rooted in mutual respect and a commitment to advancing in the AI arena.

Highlighting the transformative impact of generative AI, particularly in healthcare, the partnership is a testament to the potential of digital collaboration. From reducing healthcare costs through innovative AI applications to envisioning a tech-driven future, the dialogue underscores a commitment to sustainable and inclusive tech growth. Such collaborations are crucial in setting a blueprint for future technological endeavors.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction and Tour of Saudi High-Tech Sector This chapter provides an introduction and tour of the high-tech sector in Saudi Arabia, highlighting the opportunities for entrepreneurs, particularly women. The speaker expresses admiration for the tour given by a host, acknowledging the impressive initiatives in place to support entrepreneurship, including a visit to a startup incubator where female entrepreneurs play a significant role.
• 00:30 - 01:00: Cementing the Saudi-US Partnership and Women's Empowerment The chapter discusses the longstanding partnership between the US and Saudi Arabia, emphasizing a strategic alliance that has lasted over 90 years. It highlights the transition from an energy-based economy, in which Saudi Arabia supplies roughly 20% of the global mix, towards a digital economy. Additionally, the chapter acknowledges the recognition of women's empowerment within this evolving economic context.
• 01:00 - 01:30: AI Initiatives in Saudi Arabia The chapter discusses AI initiatives in Saudi Arabia, emphasizing the empowerment of women in technology, with a notable 36% involvement. Celebrations are due for their contributions to the digital economy, earning consecutive top rankings from the ITU, World Bank, and World Economic Forum. The narrative then shifts to the 'intelligent age,' highlighting how Saudi Arabia is utilizing its resources, such as energy, capital, land, and captive market, to advance in this new era.
• 01:30 - 02:00: Model Context Protocol (MCP) and Saudi Startups The chapter discusses the Model Context Protocol (MCP) and its impact on Saudi startups. It highlights key strategies such as push activation, acceleration, and adoption of technology. The focus is on providing competitive pricing for training and inference, showcasing generative AI applications in healthcare, especially in sickle cell disease. The chapter also notes the transformative potential of agentic AI on the Public Investment Fund's (PIF) portfolio and government efficiency, with Aramco taking a leading role through their Metabrain initiative, particularly in corrosion management.
• 02:00 - 02:30: Building Ecosystems and US-Saudi Collaboration In this chapter titled "Building Ecosystems and US-Saudi Collaboration," the focus is on a visit to a startup garage where a significant development in AI technology, referred to as "model context protocol" (MCP), was observed. Though not part of the planned tour, the MCP drew attention for being at the forefront of AI advancements. The mention of this innovation highlights the capability and forward-thinking nature of the founders and entrepreneurs involved, showcasing their engagement with the latest trends in AI. This context underscores the collaborative potential between the US and Saudi sectors in fostering cutting-edge technology ecosystems.
• 02:30 - 03:00: US AI Strategy and the Biden Diffusion Rule The chapter discusses a new standard that enables agents to communicate with existing software applications, signaling an 'agentic future' as a significant upcoming trend in AI.
• 03:00 - 03:30: Technological Diffusion and Global Partnerships The chapter highlights the importance of building an AI agent by those who are on the cutting edge of technology. It emphasizes the need to support such endeavors while drawing lessons from Silicon Valley's success over the past 25 years. The chapter observes that successful companies in Silicon Valley have thrived by creating ecosystems. It further elaborates that the most powerful tech companies have established themselves by creating the largest ecosystems, typically achieved by setting industry standards and encouraging others to build on them.
• 03:30 - 04:00: Understanding GPU Diversion and Policy The chapter discusses the concept of GPU diversion and its implications for policy-making. It highlights the ability of companies to create vast ecosystems like app stores without the need for legal contracts, simply by publishing an API and letting developers build upon it. This approach is suggested as a model for the United States to encourage global participation in building on its tech infrastructure. The chapter also touches on the speaker's experiences starting as AISAR under President Trump and the expectations tied to such a role.
• 04:00 - 04:30: Role of US Technology in Saudi Digital Services The chapter discusses the strategic importance of winning the AI race for the United States and emphasizes the necessity of building a strong partner ecosystem. The U.S. aims to collaborate with strategic partners like the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to help achieve this goal. The focus is on leveraging US technology in Saudi digital services to ensure success in the AI domain.
• 04:30 - 05:00: Innovations in Healthcare and AI in Saudi Arabia The chapter discusses the contrasting approach to technology diffusion between Washington and Saudi Arabia. While the Trump administration in Washington announced the rescinding of the Biden diffusion rule—a rule introduced in January to restrict the global diffusion of American technology—the chapter explores how Saudi Arabia is embracing innovations in healthcare and artificial intelligence. The original diffusion rule was rooted in policy concerns about the proliferation of technology.
• 05:00 - 05:30: Partnership Commitment and Closing Remarks The chapter discusses the United States' policy on restricting the export of advanced semiconductors to certain countries, specifically highlighting that the intent was to prevent these from reaching America's central competitors in the global arena. However, the policy was not meant to affect allies, friends, or strategic partners. The chapter hints at a regime created by Washington to curb the diffusion of these technologies to countries of concern.

H.E. Alswaha & David Sacks | Saudi–US AI Partnership & the Future of Innovation at #SaudiUSForum2025 Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 Thank you so much for joining us. Well, thank you for having me. You've just been an incredible host, my friend. And uh it's been really incredible to see your country. You gave me the most incredible tour of the high-tech sector of Saudi Arabia yesterday, and it's truly impressive what what your country is doing to create opportunities for entrepreneurs, I'd say, including and especially women. I was very impressed to meet a number of uh female entrepreneurs yesterday at the garage uh at your startup incubator. So, it's just been it's been very impressive to see. You're too kind. What a what a what a
• 00:30 - 01:00 wonderful introduction. So, David, yesterday, your excellency, we had the absolute wonderful opportunity to cement the partnership more than 90 years of a relationship, a strategic alliance between the US and Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia and the US to move and foster from an energy-based economy. Today we fuel roughly 20% of the global mix. Moving to the digital economy and you just have recognized our women
• 01:00 - 01:30 empowerment in tech 36%. Can we get a big round of applause for all the amazing women fueling our digital economy and being named number one number two consecutively by ITU, the World Bank, the World Economic Forum. Fast forward to the intelligent age. The intelligent age. Yesterday, we showed you how we're leveraging our energy, our capital, our land, captive market to
• 01:30 - 02:00 push activation, acceleration, and adoption. the lowest price point for training, inference and some of the world leading examples in generative AI in healthcare, cickle cell disease, agentic AI transforming both the wonderful PIF portfolio and our government efficiency and adoption in led by Aramco with their metabrain the corrosion. Tell me about your reflections.
• 02:00 - 02:30 Well, when we were uh doing the tour yesterday of the uh of the startup garage, uh one of the the things that we saw which wasn't I think planned or on the tour is we saw a whiteboard that someone had drawn uh a diagram for model context protocol or MCP. I don't know if people here know what MCP is, but it's really it's catching fire in the world of AI. And it showed that your your founders and entrepreneurs are really on the cutting edge of what's happening with with AI. uh MCP is a is a new um
• 02:30 - 03:00 it's this new standard that allows uh agents to talk to existing SAS applications or any kind of application and it's really going to enable this agentic future that I think is the next big wave in in AI. So the fact that someone had just was was scribbling that on a whiteboard showed me that trust me that that was that was planted there orchestrated that was organic. shows you the depth and the breadth of the technical capacity that we are led by our youth and women. Yes. And I I could tell that that there there's a founder
• 03:00 - 03:30 who who is building an an AI agent there who's really on the cutting edge. And I think this is the kind of thing we need to uh to enable and to want to support. The thing that that I I've learned in Silicon Valley over the past 25 years is that every successful company in Silicon Valley gets to be that way by creating an ecosystem. And the biggest the most powerful companies in tech are the ones that create the biggest ecosystem. In fact, they do that by creating a standard. They want everyone to build on
• 03:30 - 04:00 top of them. They create app stores, things like that. In fact, they're able to build these ecosystems without even having any lawyers involved. There's no need for a contract. You just publish an API and people will build. And I think in a similar way, the United States needs to encourage the world to build on our tech stack. you know, the first week that I became uh AISAR for for President Trump, I love that. AISAR, it's a it's a big title to live up to sometimes, but uh but the president challenged us and
• 04:00 - 04:30 he tasked us. He said, "We have to win the AI race. The United States has to win the AI race." And every day I think about win with the kingdom. Well, I'm about to get there. And and I I think about how is it that we do that? How do we win the AI race? And the answer is that we have to build the biggest partner ecosystem. We need our friends like the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and other strategic partners and allies to want to build on our tech. And yet over the past few years, that's been
• 04:30 - 05:00 the opposite of the approach in Washington. The Trump administration just announced that we'd be rescending what's known as the Biden diffusion rule, which was a rule that came out in January. Can we get a Thank you. Because it's about diffusion adoption. Yes. The Biden diffusion rule came out in in January and it literally restricted the the diffusion which or proliferation of American technology all over the world. Now the original reason for this diffusion rule is that we have a policy
• 05:00 - 05:30 of not wanting our advanced semiconductors to go to what are known as countries of concern. But there's only a very very small number of those countries. And really we're talking about, you know, America's uh central competitors in in the world. It was never intended to capture friends, allies, strategic partners. And yet out of this, I think desire to try and prevent diffusion. Uh what Washington sought to do was create a uh regime
• 05:30 - 06:00 restricting the uh the transfer of basically of data centers of data center technology. Now imagine if you know let's take let's take this imagine if Washington had created a diffusion rule for the iPhone because it was worried about bad guys somehow getting a hold of iPhones and every iPhone transaction had to be licensed in Washington. This technology would not have spread all over the world and the diffusion of iPhones is a very good thing for the United States of America. I think in a
• 06:00 - 06:30 similar way we want our technology to diffuse or to spread. We want people to use it. We want to become the standard and I think that in Washington that mentality has I think been sorely lacking over the past few years but we're we're going to bring it back. Well, this is a general purpose technology and and you can't leave pe people behind. Yes, folks are going to get these chips away or another, but you need to make sure that there are safeguards and guardrails to make sure that there's no technological diversion. And if I take the kingdom of Saudi
• 06:30 - 07:00 Arabia, we've had your mainframe for example back then it used to be called the supercomputer since 1947 in Aramco and they had protocols on how to protect it diversion to any specific nation. And and I couldn't agree with you more my dear friend. It's all about the diffusion. This is how you create stickiness with your clients, with your partners, how you can create success and how could you scale up this this trillion dollar business soon to be multiple of trillion trillion dollars.
• 07:00 - 07:30 Let me speak to that that uh risk of of diversion for a second. So, you're absolutely right. It's not an issue with a friend like Saudi Arabia at all. But I think that in general I think that there's a a great deal of misunderstanding about the diver uh diversion of GPUs. Uh people tend to think that these things are like diamonds that can fit in a briefcase or something like that. That's an antiquated understanding now of the type of technology we're talking about. What we're really talking about here are
• 07:30 - 08:00 servers that incorporate uh GPUs. And in fact, we're talking about server racks. The latest NVIDIA product called NVL72 is a server uh cabinet that contains 72 super chips. It's stacked 8 ft high and weighs 3600 lb. Okay, this is not something that can be smuggled in a briefcase. And the truth is that you need thousands of these things to create a supercluster that could be a national security threat to the United States.
• 08:00 - 08:30 So the the the the um the the the policy objective of preventing diversion to countries of concerns is an absolutely uh important objective of the United States, but it is not a difficult one to achieve. The truth of the matter is that all one would have to do is send someone to a data center and count the server racks to make sure that the chips are still there. And so we act like this is something where we need to shut down uh
• 08:30 - 09:00 every data center in the world unless it specifically goes through Washington. This is not the case. We can manage this problem of diversion without stopping the diffusion of American technology. Well, David, you you've seen it yesterday how US technologies have helped us deliver a passport within 5 minutes. You said to me we're going to see soon see that in other economies as well. how you could renew your license, how you could do all of your different digital services in a cashless society
• 09:00 - 09:30 as well from the digital age and in the intelligent age. We've showed you firsthand how we're creating nanoobots with crisper technology leveraging generative AI to tackle cell disease, bad cholesterol, have targeted gene therapy, which is remarkable, reducing the cost to treat a patient from 2.2 2 million to just sub$100,000. Think about the remarkable work that we're doing in Agentic AI helping Aramco energize the world which we need to fuel
• 09:30 - 10:00 the US ambition and Saudi's ambition in AI training and inference because we're going to converge not only to the price point of electronics but it's really the price point of electrons in the kingdom today in renewable in the last bit we had a a single sense per kilowatt hour at generation we continue to push the needle on the lowest price point per million token input and output. We've just released it in Dam which is quite
• 10:00 - 10:30 remarkable and we're pushing also on physical AI with the first fully robotics heart transplant. So you're seeing it in essence that you're joining hands with a reliable partner that is all about the great good of diffusion and adoption of these technologies for the greater good of the people, planet and prosperity. My good friend, we could not be more proud of our partnership. And as we say in Saudi, once we partner, we partner for a lifetime. Thank you, my
• 10:30 - 11:00 friend. Absolutely. Thank you. Give it to David Sax, please. Thank you. Thank you.