Tariq Al-Mansouri, Author at icnlive

Data Centers

SDAIA Academy Summer Bootcamps Bring 18 Data and AI Courses This August

SDAIA Academy summer bootcamps return this August with 18 specialized training programs in data and artificial intelligence. The Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority announced the lineup on July 20 under what it calls the future summer initiative. Two groups are in scope. Specialists already working in the field and people trying to break into it.

Think of it as a compressed apprenticeship. Rather than a semester of theory, participants spend the days building.

What the 18 tracks cover

The curriculum leans technical. Programs run across generative programming, AI agent systems engineering, AI agent development, and modern data engineering for AI applications. Computer vision for developers is on the list. So are prompt engineering, responsible AI use, and applying artificial intelligence to raise productivity and tighten business processes.

Those titles map closely to what companies are hiring for right now. An AI agent that books, checks, and escalates on its own needs someone who can wire it together and keep it from going off the rails. That is a job, not a concept.

Data governance gets equal billing. A second cluster of programs handles data management, governance, quality, and integration. It sounds less glamorous than agent engineering. It usually decides whether the agent works at all. A model reads whatever you feed it. Feed it duplicated records and stale fields, and the output looks confident and wrong. SDAIA has spent years building the rules around national data use, so training people to apply those rules is part of the same project.

How the SDAIA Academy summer bootcamps run

The format is intensive. Short, dense, hands-on. The academy focuses on practical skills, smart solution development, application design, and best practices in responsible AI deployment and data management. Participants are meant to walk out with work they built rather than notes they will lose.

That design says something about the hiring market. Shipping an AI agent or repairing a broken pipeline is demonstrable. Reading about either is not.

Registration and the AthkaX platform

Registration for the SDAIA Academy summer bootcamps runs through the AthkaX platform at athkax.sdaia.gov.sa. AthkaX is SDAIA’s national platform for capacity building in data and AI, launched during the International Conference on Data and AI Capacity Building. Program details and schedules are on the same platform.

Where the bootcamps fit in Saudi Vision 2030

August is the second wave of the season. In early July, SDAIA Academy launched eight training programs and bootcamps under a July summer initiative, mixing professional tracks with beginner courses on prompt engineering and AI at work. Eighteen bootcamps are more than double that count, in a single month.

The SDAIA training bootcamps sit within the Year of Artificial Intelligence and the workforce ambitions of Saudi Vision 2030, which calls for a globally competitive digital workforce. AthkaX connects to the Human Capability Development Program, one of the Vision 2030 programs.

AI training programs in Saudi Arabia have turned into a steady pipeline rather than scattered one-off events. Over the past year, SDAIA Academy has run a quantum computing camp and a professional program in large language models built toward NVIDIA certification. The SDAIA Academy summer bootcamps extend that cadence into the summer months, when students and job seekers have time to commit.

If a move into data or AI work is on your list, August is the window.

Saudi Arabia’s AI market, 2025–2032

Three houses looked at the same market and came back with numbers that barely overlap. Ken Research starts Saudi AI at $4.3 billion in 2025 and takes it to $19.36 billion by 2031. A second forecast begins higher, at $5.2 billion, but grows more slowly and lands at $14.3 billion. A third starts at just $2.14 billion and nearly matches the top line by 2032.

The base year is where they disagree most: the highest estimate is more than double the lowest. That gap is a definitional problem, not a forecasting one. What all three agree on is direction, and Saudi enterprise spending backs it up.

By Tariq Al-Mansouri
4 min read

AI Investments

Nvidia Lines Up $500 bn for AI Buildout With Six Wall Street Firms

Nvidia just found $500 bn for AI buildout, and it didn’t have to write the check itself.

On Monday, the chipmaker announced memorandums of understanding with six of Wall Street’s biggest names: Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs and KKR. The goal is to stand up independent compute financing platforms that pull in more than $500 billion in third-party capital, money that flows toward building the data centers running on Nvidia hardware.

Think of it like a mortgage for GPUs. Instead of a cloud provider or AI lab draining its own balance sheet to buy chips, an outside lender fronts the capital, and the GPU cluster itself, plus the revenue it generates, backs the loan. That’s the model Nvidia is pitching to the market this week.

Why $500 bn for AI Buildout Matters Now

Big Tech isn’t slowing down. Combined AI spending across the major players is on track to clear $730 billion this year alone. Every one of those dollars has to come from somewhere, and increasingly, that somewhere is outside the tech companies’ own books.

This is where Nvidia AI financing platforms come in. The arrangements are designed to widen access to Nvidia-based infrastructure for frontier AI developers, enterprises, governments and cloud providers. For the six financial firms, it opens a new kind of long-duration, usage-linked investment tied directly to compute demand rather than to a company’s broader credit profile.

Huang framed it plainly in Nvidia’s statement: “These financing platforms will help customers access scarce compute at scale and build the AI factories that will power every industry and country in the age of AI.” Nvidia also said the setup would create dedicated pools of capital at attractive rates, though it stopped short of naming a timetable or individual commitment sizes.

What This AI Infrastructure Financing Actually Looks Like

Here’s the part worth watching closely. Nvidia hasn’t disclosed which of the six firms will lend, which will insure, and which will package and resell the risk. KKR has already floated the idea of securitizing AI infrastructure revenue, carving it into pieces institutional investors can buy. BlackRock’s Larry Fink went further, comparing the setup to the early mortgage-backed securities market of the 1970s.

That comparison cuts both ways. Mortgage-backed securities eventually built a trillion-dollar market. They also became infamous decades later. Nobody is claiming AI compute financing will follow that same arc, but the analogy signals how seriously Wall Street is treating this compute financing opportunity.

Huang has also said Nvidia itself may back up to 25 percent of a given financing deal, which keeps the company financially tied to its own customer base. If demand for AI computing power cools, Nvidia isn’t fully insulated from that risk. It’s a partner in the platforms, not just a hardware vendor standing on the sidelines.

The Numbers Behind the $500 bn for AI Buildout Push

None of the six firms has confirmed exactly how much capital they’ll each put toward the effort. The $500 billion figure describes the target ceiling across all six platforms combined, not a jointly pooled fund sitting ready to deploy. Terms, borrowers and timelines remain, in Nvidia’s own words, still being worked out.

Still, the direction is clear. This is meant to be the first AI data center funding structure of its kind at this scale, built specifically around Nvidia’s ecosystem. BlackRock and Goldman Sachs both manage retirement and pension money, so if the platforms scale as planned, exposure to AI infrastructure debt could eventually touch retirement accounts most people never think to connect to a GPU order.

The Financial Times reported the deal first on Monday, with Reuters confirming shortly after. For now, the framework is set. The dollar figures, and the risk that comes with them, are still being written.

By Tariq Al-Mansouri
4 min read

Sharjah

Shamsa Entertainment City opens in Aljada with family fun until September

Shamsa Entertainment City has opened its doors in Aljada, and it gives families a fresh reason to head out this summer. The open-air venue runs until 5 September under the theme “Shamsa Festival, Where Joy Shines”. It sits inside Sharjah Summer Promotions 2026, the emirate’s yearly push to bring shoppers and visitors out during the warmer months.

The Sharjah Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Sharjah Commerce and Tourism Development Authority organise the venue together. Their pitch is simple. Give families interactive activities and outdoor entertainment, and lift the local economy at the same time.

What Shamsa Entertainment City offers

Picture a summer hub built for kids and parents. Interactive games and open-air fun fill the space in Aljada Sharjah, one of the emirate’s newer community districts. The layout leans on hands-on play rather than passive screens, which keeps younger visitors moving. That setting matters. Aljada already pulls crowds for dining and events, so the venue lands where people already are.

You do not have to travel far to reach it. That is the whole idea. Organisers want a spot that feels close, easy, and worth the trip on a hot afternoon.

Inside Sharjah Summer Promotions 2026

Shamsa Entertainment City is one piece of a much larger campaign. Sharjah Summer Promotions 2026 reaches across Sharjah City, the Central Region, and the East Coast towns of Khorfakkan, Kalba, and Dibba Al Hisn. Shoppers can find discounts of up to 75 percent across thousands of retail outlets and shopping malls.

The season offers more than shopping. Families also get over 60 Sharjah tourism packages and experiences, plus more than 700 prizes for visitors. Over 55 public and private partners back the programme, which shows how much weight the emirate puts behind it.

Khalid Jasim Al Midfa, Chairman of the Sharjah Commerce and Tourism Development Authority, said the campaign aimed to strengthen Sharjah’s position as a tourism and family destination. He described a summer atmosphere that brings together entertainment, creativity, and community engagement for citizens, residents, and tourists.

Why the venue matters now

Mohammad Ahmed Amin Al Awadi, Director-General of SCCI, said the launch reflected the chamber’s work to support economic activity and community well-being. Read between the lines, and the plan is clear. Entertainment brings families in. Families spend. Retail and tourism both gain.

Sharjah has run this play before. The 2025 edition drew strong turnout and gave local businesses a measurable lift. This year’s version stretches the summer season longer and adds more partners, so the emirate is building on something that already works. The model rewards repeat visits, and that is where the real value sits for organisers.

For families weighing where to spend a summer day, the appeal is practical. You get activities for the kids, deals for the household, and a short drive rather than a long one. That mix turns a one-time visit into a habit, and it positions Sharjah as a family destination worth returning to.

Shamsa Entertainment City runs through early September, which leaves plenty of weekends to plan around. If you live in or near the emirate, the calendar is on your side. The venue and the wider campaign both wind down before the school term picks up, so the window is open now.

By Tariq Al-Mansouri
3 min read

Tariq Al-Mansouri