Saudi Arabia's The Line pivots from futuristic desert city to AI data center hub

Ambitious 170 km long Saudimegacity 'The Line' has scope slashed and may be repurposed as AI data center hub -- futuristic desert city was set to house 9 million people, and showcased polarizing sci-fi design

A new unconfirmed report claims that Saudi Arabia is planning to drastically reduce the size and scale of its Neom Megaproject, dubbed 'The Line,' a futuristic vision of a linear city that would have held 9 million people if realised. According to FT, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is now planning something "far smaller," possibly an AI data center hub. The Line was previously touted as a "cognitive city" that would stretch 170 kilometers from the Red Sea across Saudi Arabia's desert landscape. Measuring 500 meters in height but just 200 meters in width, it would have purportedly featured no cars or roads and 100 percent renewable energy production. According to its own website, The Line could have housed 9 million people in a space just 34 square kilometers in size (13.1 square miles) while leaving 95% of its land preserved for nature. That vision now appears to have been flagged as overambitious. According to the report, the project is set to be "significantly downscaled and redesigned," prompted by a review of the development, which has faced delays and overspending. Perhaps more interestingly, FT reports the site "could now become a hub for data centres as part of Prince Mohammed's aggressive push for the kingdom to become a leading AI player," citing people briefed on the matter. The report cites that the Kingdom is wrestling with "tightening liquidity after a decade of massive spending," and "subdued" oil prices, as well as other hefty projects like the Expo trade fair and 2034 World Cup. In a statement given to FT, Neom didn't deny the report, rather stating that it was "always looking at how to phase and prioritise our initiatives so that they align with national objectives and create long-term value," adding it is "advancing projects in line with strategic priorities, market readiness and sustainable economic impact." According to a person cited in the report, The Line will be a "totally different concept" moving forward, with a focus on industry and as a hub for AI data centers. They say the coastal city will use seawater for cooling and be "a major center" for AI. Saudi Arabia is attempting to become a player in the ongoing AI buildout race. In May of 2025, it received 18,000 AI GPUs for its state-sponsored data centers from Nvidia. The nation has a significant problem to overcome, however, in its very hot and dry climate. In a recent report revealing that nearly 7,000 of the world's 8,808 operational data centers are built in the wrong climate, Saudi Arabia was one of only a handful of nations where nearly all of its data centers are built in zones considered too hot for efficient operation. Unfettered access to the Red Sea, where The Line ends, could be a novel solution to this issue. Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News, or add us as a preferred source, to get our latest news, analysis, & reviews in your feeds.

Saudi Arabia's Futuristic Megacity Runs Into Dilemma: Why Build Housing When You Can Build a Data Center?

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had a vision for the perfect city: no streets, no cars, a completely sustainable environment that has everything a person could need. He's apparently willing to settle on just building some data centers. According to the Financial Times, the much-maligned plans for a megacity project known as Neom are set to be downsized from their original ambitions and may go from being a hub for humans to a hub for AI. Sounds about right. The Line, the most famous high-profile facet of Neom, was initially imagined as a fully contained city that would primarily exist in a linear design, stretching 110 miles long with walls that climbed up 1,600 feet, though the whole thing would be just 660 feet wide. It'd be able to house up to nine million people, and anyone would be able to cross from one end of the city to the other in just 20 minutes via subway. Shockingly, realizing that dream has proved difficult. While Saudi Arabia broke ground on the project in 2022, it has been plagued with delays, setbacks, and sizable budget overruns. It didn't take long for developers to start pushing back on some of the more outlandish ideas in the project, like an upside-down building that would hang from a bridge. Last year, the CEO overseeing Neom abruptly quit, and there were rumblings that the project would go from a full-fledged futuristic city to something more like a small proof of concept for what could be done down the road. Now it seems like even that level of ambition feels out of reach. Per the Financial Times, the latest on the project is that it'll be "far smaller" than initially planned, and may even cease to be a city at all. The report suggests that Neom could pivot to become a hub for data centers, in line with Prince Mohammed's design to make Saudi Arabia a major player in the AI space. The failure of The Line, predictable as it is, would be much funnier if not for the high human cost that has endured for the doomed project. To secure the land for the project, the Saudi government evicted people from their homes and even executed three people for refusing to vacate. Much of the construction has been done by migrant workers who have been exposed to slavery-like conditions, and reports from human rights groups indicate that dozens have died and many more have sustained serious injury while working on the project. All that to ultimately power some chatbots. Some lines don't need to be drawn.

Saudi Arabia ditches its linear city dream to build an AI data center

Coastal access offers potential seawater cooling for desert data centers Saudi Arabia's Neom project, known as "The Line", was originally described as a linear urban development stretching roughly 170km across the desert. The concept envisioned a linear city with extreme density, automated mobility, and renewable energy that would accommodate 9 million residents within its narrow footprint. However, reports now suggest officials are reconsidering this vision after internal reviews revealed delays, rising costs, and broader fiscal pressure - and sources cited by the Financial Times say the revised plan may abandon large-scale residential ambitions in favor of far smaller industrial use. In this context, planners are reportedly considering the site as a hub for cloud hosting and large-scale data centers designed to support intensive compute workloads. It will probably prioritize high-density server deployments for AI training and inference, rather than housing or urban services. Some accounts suggest operators would favor bare metal infrastructure to maximize performance and utilization efficiency. Saudi Arabia has recently accelerated investment in AI capacity, including the acquisition of thousands of advanced GPUs for state-backed facilities. However, Saudi Arabia's climate poses a well-documented challenge for data center operations, especially given sustained high temperatures and limited freshwater availability. Independent research has identified the country as one where most existing data centers operate in zones considered inefficient for cooling. But The Line's coastal access to the Red Sea offers a practical advantage, with planners proposing seawater cooling as a mitigation strategy. Similar projects, such as xAI's Colossus in Memphis, have faced scrutiny after satellite checks suggested limits in available electricity or cooling capacity for AI systems. Whether the downscaled data center will reach full capacity remains unclear, but Saudi Arabia chose to pause The Line in favor of a smaller plan. The desert nation has faced tightening liquidity after years of expansive public spending, while lower oil revenues and competing commitments like the Expo trade fair and the 2034 World Cup added pressure. Neom did not directly dispute claims of a reduced scope, instead emphasizing phased development and alignment with national priorities. This approach suggests flexibility rather than a firm commitment to the original scale or timeline. Observers note similar adjustments have already occurred across other Saudi megaprojects. But without a clear reaffirmation of the original plan, speculation has grown that the linear city model may no longer sit at the center of Neom's near-term strategy.

Saudi Arabia's The Line is collapsing into a hyphen

Saudi Arabia is officially gutting Neom and turning The Line into a server farm. After a year-long review triggered by financial reality, the Financial Times reports that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's flagship project is being "significantly downscaled." The futuristic linear city known as The Line, originally designed to stretch 150 miles across the desert, is scrapping its sci-fi ambitions to become a far smaller project focused on industrial sectors, says the FT. It's a rumor that the Saudis originally dismissed when The Guardian first reported on it in 2024. The redesign confirms what skeptics have long suspected: the laws of physics and economics have finally breached the walls of the kingdom's futuristic Saudi Vision 2030, a country reconversion program aimed at lowering Saudi Arabia's dependency on oil and transforming the country into a more modern society. The glossy renderings of the mile-long skyscraper and vertical forests that was The Line are now dissolving into a pragmatic, if desperate, attempt to salvage the sunk costs. The development, once framed as a "civilization revolution" was originally imagined as a 105-mile long, 1,640-foot high, 656-foot wide car-free smart city designed to house 9 million residents. The redesign pivots toward making Neom a hub for data centers to support the kingdom's aggressive AI push. An insider told the FT the logic is purely utilitarian: "Data centers need water cooling and this is right on the coast," signaling that the ambitious city has been downgraded to server farm with a view of the Red Sea. The end of the line The scaling back follows years of operational chaos and financial bleeding. Since its 2017 launch, the project promised a 105-mile strip of high-density living. But reality struck early. By April 2024, The Guardian reported that planners were already being forced to slash the initial phase to just 2.4 kilometers (1.5 miles) by 2030, reducing the projected population from 1.5 million to fewer than 300,000.