Following on the footsteps on UAE's G42 and Saudi Arabia's Humain, Qatar is setting up a new firm to develop not just artificial intelligence infrastructure in Qatar but across the world.
Doha-based Qai, which will be a subsidiary of the Qatar Investment Authority, stated that it will provide “high-performance computing and a connect suite of tools.
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Abdulla Al-Misnad, a former board director of Doha Venture Capital who will chair the new company, stated that Qai will develop “trusted” AI tools that individuals and companies require, reported Bloomberg.
“We’re thinking one, two, three years down the line,” Al-Misnad said. “That’s where you get value out of AI.”
Can Qatar's Qai catch up with UAE's G42 and Saudi's Humain?
To compete with the UAE and Saudi Arabia, Qatar needs to get licences import AI chips from companies like Nvidia and AMD.
G42 gets US boost
Currently, the UAE is the only GCC nation to undertake AI initiatives complying with the US governance models, export controls and other regulations. Last month, the US approved AI semiconductor exports to UAE, giving a fillip to G42 projects like Stargate UAE, a 1-gigawatt AI computer cluster set up with support of Cisco, Nvidia, Oracle and SoftBank Group.
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The deployment of AI chips in the UAE should comply with the Regulated Technology Environment (RTE), approved under the guidelines of the US Department of Commerce and the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS).
G42 is also planning to collaborate with more hyperscalers and chipmakers such as Microsoft, AMD, Qualcomm and Cerebras.
Humain sets ambitious goals
Saudi Arabia is also pushing AI infrastructure with its Humain, which builds data centres, large language models, and cloud capabilities. Humain was unveiled by Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman in May ahead of president Donald Trump's visit.
The investment vehicle, owned by Saudi's $1 trillion sovereign wealth fund, is aiming to make the kingdom the third largest AI market globally after the US and China. It is hoping building six gigawatts worth of data centre capability by 2034 in collaborations with Nvidia, Cisco, AMD, Qualcomm and Amazon Web Services.
In late October, Humain announced a $3 billion deal with Blackstone to develop its data centre infrastructure.
