As Saudi Arabia’s new Riyadh Air prepares to start flying next year, the kingdom’s venerable carrier Saudia is being repositioned to fit into a new blueprint for boosting business and tourism.

The Saudi Public Investment Fund has started talks to acquire Jeddah-based Saudia, which flies to 90 destinations, in a step that may lead to the airline’s privatization, Bloomberg reports.

The two airlines will work in tandem to pursue the kingdom’s twin goals of bolstering access to Saudi Arabia as a regional finance hub while also turning it into a magnet for foreign tourists.

Under the plan, Riyadh Air pursues the business crowd and Saudia will focus more on the market for religious pilgrimages to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.

This week, Abu Dhabi launched AI investment company MGX with the ambition of building up $100 billion in assets under management within a few years, which would make it one of the biggest AI-focused investors in the world.

Now, the brand new firm – with founding partners Mubadala and the UAE’s flagship artificial intelligence company G42 – is in early talks with Sam Altman to invest in his multi-trillion-dollar chip venture, the Financial Times reports.

A quick timeline of Sam Altman in the UAE: In June of last year while on a global speaking tour, he charmed a crowd in Abu Dhabi when he noted that the emirate has been talking about AI “since before it was cool.”

Four months later, G42 announced a partnership with Altman’s OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, to scale up the availability of generative AI tools in the Middle East in sectors where it already has clients, like financial services, healthcare and energy.

Last month, Altman suggested the UAE could lead the formation of a global AI watchdog, speaking to UAE Minister of AI Omar Al Olama via video link during the World Governments Summit in Dubai.

The FT’s report today follows earlier headlines that the OpenAI Co-founder and CEO is seeking trillions of dollars to fund a chip-making business with the aim of reducing dependence on other manufacturers like Nvidia.

That would provide the vast computing power necessary to bring OpenAI’s biggest ambitions for generative AI to bear.

Al Olama told the FT that he also sees Elon Musk, who founded xAI last year, bringing some of his own business to the UAE.

“I don’t think it’s far out for him (Musk) to do something here,” Al Olama said, adding that “the economics are going to dictate what he and others do here.”

Saudi Arabia’s tourism industry has drawn about $13 billion in private sector investment, adding thrust to its campaign to attract international travelers.

The money will pay for the addition of 150,000 to 200,000 hotel rooms over the next two years, Princess Haifa M. Al Saud, Saudi Arabia’s vice minister for tourism, told Bloomberg.

Government projections call for $85 billion in tourism revenue in 2024, up from $66 billion last year.

The kingdom has been on a spending spree to spruce up historical sites such as the desert city of AlUla and the Diriyah section of Riyadh with luxury hotels and high-end restaurants.

It has also staged gaming conferences, MMA (mixed martial arts) matches and hip-hop concerts to attract younger visitors from abroad.

Abu Dhabi’s G42 shared its latest progress on building a network of nine supercomputers, a massive project first announced last year and undertaken in partnership with U.S. semiconductor startup Cerebras Systems.

The aim is to equip the UAE’s flagship artificial intelligence firm with access to some of the fastest and most efficient computing power in the world to train its large language models like Jais, an Arabic-and-English bilingual LLM and Med42, which is being deployed in healthcare. 

On Wednesday, G42 said it had broken ground on the third phase of its Condor Galaxy supercomputer network, this one located in Dallas, Tex.

The new high-performing hardware is powered by the industry’s fastest AI chip as Cerebras looks to compete with market-dominating chipmaker Nvidia. 

G42 also announced the commercial rollout of BoardNavigator, an AI technology developed with Microsoft as a corporate strategy and governance assistant.

The AI tool will analyze large proprietary and public data sets to support board members in their decision-making processes, the company said.

UAE conglomerate International Holding Co. (IHC), chaired by UAE National Security Advisor Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed – who also chairs G42 – is the first customer. 

Saudi Arabia is looking to lure private capital to its local pro football clubs amid a push in the region to nurture a sports and leisure sector.

“We expect to have another wave of privatization coming up soon,” Vice Minister of Sport Bader Alkadi said at Bloomberg Power Players Jeddah on Thursday. “That gives us opportunity to make the investment in sport a sustainable investment.”

Saudi Arabia and, to a somewhat lesser extent, the UAE, have been on a spending spree to develop leagues and facilities to support athletics on the professional and recreational levels.

On Friday, Abu Dhabi Entertainment Company inked a deal with Sanad Strata and Solutions+ to update sports facilities across the capital.

Meanwhile, Dubai opened two new bike paths over the weekend as it plans over 600 miles of track. 

Abu Dhabi Global Market, the UAE capital’s financial Free Zone, boosted its roster of companies by 447 last year, a 32% increase, as it grew into one of the world’s largest financial districts.

Assets under management increased 35%, according to a statement released on Thursday. 

Among the 1,825 firms in the ADGM at the end of 2023, newcomers included Brevan Howard, Ardian, Goldman Sachs, Blackstone, SBI Capital, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, Apollo and Vibrant Capital.

Another 125 companies are in the process of seeking to set up shop in the ADGM.

Hong Kong’s Infini Capital announced that it received preliminary regulatory permission to establish an office and, upon final approval, would become the first Asian hedge fund in the ADGM.

The conference circuit will give way to the Iftar and Suhoor circuits in the Gulf as Ramadan is expected to begin next Monday or Tuesday.

The Holy Month brings about one of the quietest times for deal activity and events in the region as hours are shortened for workers across sectors to make room for daylong fasting and more time spent with family. 

Working hours are reduced by government mandate, typically to five hours a day in the public sector in the GCC countries, and private companies tend to follow suit.

Last year, venture capital activity dropped 41% in funding and 64% in the number of deals compared to the same period in 2022. The plunge in activity was partly attributed by data platform Magnitt to the timing of Ramadan – which had occurred later in 2022. 

The official start date of the Holy Month is typically announced when countries’ respective moon-sighting committees, made up of religious leaders and astronomers, spot the crescent moon, which marks the beginning.

This means the official announcement for the start of Ramadan 2024 isn’t expected to be revealed until tomorrow or Sunday. 

Many companies with a Gulf presence will host an Iftar or Suhoor meal during Ramadan for employees and clients.

Tiktok’s Dubai office hosted a flower-draped Suhoor last year, bringing together content creators and employees, as well as Arabic calligraphers and sand art. 

Energia Foundation and Tabula Rasa Ventures, two research and investment firms that introduced psychedelics to the Davos crowd in 2022, have been promoting psychedelic-assisted therapy to policymakers, sovereign wealth funds and clinicians in the UAE, according to a statement.

“There’s still a lot of important research that needs to be done, but I’m hopeful that these medicines can expand the arsenal of tools we have,” Nahida Nayaz Ahmed, Chief Medical Officer at SEHA Mental Health and Well-Being Services, a unit of the ADQ-backed PureHealth, said.

Mubadala is reportedly eyeing investments in biotech companies developing psychedelic medicines.