Saudis Are Talking To Amazon, Alibaba Over New City, Prince Says

Ambitious robot city is attracting investment in the hundreds of billions of dollars

- Alaa Shahine, Erik Schatzker, Vivian Nereim, & Glen Carey

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said Saudi Arabia is in talks with some of the world’s biggest companies to develop technologies that will power life in the $500 billion city he’s planning to build on the Red Sea.

Neom, as the project is known, is due to open for business by 2025, with limited operations expected as early as 2020, Prince Mohammed told Bloomberg News in an interview in Riyadh last month. Amazon. com Inc., Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and Airbus SE are already involved in discussions, he said.

“We are talking with everyone,” said the 32-year old prince, heir to the throne of the world’s biggest oil exporter. “We have the ‘who’s who’ from around the world engaging in this.”

Prince Mohammed is trying to steer Saudi Arabia away from oil-dependence, something that few major economies have managed. And he keeps moving the goalposts -- to make the plans more ambitious.

The social and economic changes outlined since 2015 already include selling a stake in oil giant Aramco, and ending a longstanding ban on women driving cars. This week, Prince Mohammed announced the city project, and also said he’ll transform the religious basis of Saudi society and make its austere version of Islam more “moderate.”