Saudi backs GAIA with $1 billion

$1 billion in government backing for ecosystem announced at #LEAP24

#Saudi #startups - The government of Saudi Arabia plans to put $1 billion behind GAIA, its generative AI startup accelerator programme and developing the ecosystem that surrounds it. H.E. Abdullah Alswaha, Minister of Communications and Information Technology, announced the new funding at the Kingdom’s annual IT mega-show LEAP.

"Last year we announced the largest Generative AI Accelerator, GAIA, and this year... we've decided to take it to $1 billion in partnership with His Royal Highness [Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, Crown Prince and Prime Minister of Saudi Arabia]."

SO WHAT? - GAIA (Generative AI Accelerator) was launched in Riyadh in May 2023 as the region's first dedicated AI accelerator programme, as a collaboration between the Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority (SDAIA), the National Technology Development Programme (NTDP), and New Native The accelerator has already had nearly 50 AI startups through the first three cohorts of the programme, and is now accepting applications for its fourth cohort,

• GAIA was launched last year with the goal of creating 300 new high-impact AI companies within 36 months, through early-stage funding, mentorship, and AI technology access. Now it seems likely that this target will be replaced with a more ambitious one.

• GAIA is based at The Garage in King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST), and run by global AI platform New Native. The 10-week accelerator programme sources promising startups and entrepreneurs via AI hackathons run via New Native’s Lablab.ai community platform.

• New Native's Lablab hackathon platform brings together talent, experts, and resources to generate proof-of-concept projects in generative AI, providing a pipeline for GAIA.

• GAIA welcomed 15 startups in its first cohort, 15 in its second and 18 in its third. The accelerator is currently accepting applications for its fourth cohort.

ZOOM OUT - Saudi Arabia has moved purposefully over the past 18 months to dramatically increase the number of programmes, level of support and funding available to AI entrepreneurs and startups. New programmes and initiatives are being introduced at multiple points in the ecosystem, from research universities, to government departments, to government and private sector funds, to specialist programmes run by global startup ecosystems. In creating GAIA, the Kingdom became the first mover in creating an accelerator for GenAI startups and is already funding more GenAI startups than any other programme in the region.

IMO - With few details available, there’s limited value in speculating on the impact of the new $1 billion backing for the GAIA ecosystem, since this could be applied in many different ways and not by any means limited to the core accelerator. However, three obvious moves related to the accelerator itself would be 1) to dramatically increase the accelerators target throughput from 300 startups to say, 2,000; 2) to increase the funding available to startups in order to attract bigger startups with more IP to the programme; ór 3) to open the accelerator to corporate innovators, helping companies and government departments build better AI solutions. However, we’ll have to wait and see!

Updated 12-Mar-24

Read more about GAIA:

• New Native launches $100 million AI VC fund (Middle East AI News)