Saudi Arabia is investing billions in artificial intelligence through government-backed initiatives, infrastructure spending and global partnerships, reflecting its ambition to become a global leader in AI and remain at the forefront of a technology trend expected to see global AI spending reach $2.59 trillion in 2026.

Despite the scale of global AI investment, only 28 percent of AI projects deliver a return on investment, with many failing to produce meaningful results. This highlights the need for organizations to pay greater attention to how AI will operate within their technology stack, particularly their storage infrastructure.

A lack of due diligence in this area increases the risk of inflated costs, technical debt and compliance issues, and is likely to lead to difficult budget conversations with the board.

As Saudi organizations move from AI experimentation toward production-scale deployments, the infrastructure decisions made today will have a significant bearing on whether those investments deliver the expected returns.

No data, no AI

The AI industry often talks about performance in terms of computing power and processing speed. High-performance GPUs and NPUs have attracted much of the attention — and investment.

But while computing power is essential, AI data continually evolves, expands and requires restructuring over time. This leads to one fundamental truth: AI is a data system.

With this in mind, the importance of data infrastructure capable of managing information throughout the AI lifecycle becomes increasingly clear. This is particularly relevant in Saudi Arabia, where the government’s push for economic diversification and AI leadership under Saudi Vision 2030 is expected to accelerate demand for advanced storage infrastructure.

To maximize ROI from AI, organizations need to view storage and data infrastructure as strategic components rather than last-minute supporting technologies. AI success depends on ensuring this infrastructure is aligned with broader technology and business objectives from the outset.

Data storage

The volumes of data involved in AI exceed anything most businesses have dealt with before. Global data creation is forecast to increase from 218.4 zettabytes in 2025 to 718.5 zettabytes in 2030, more than tripling in just five years.

By its nature, AI continuously expands data volumes, generating logs, metadata, synthetic outputs, training data and more. More importantly, AI performance depends on the quality of its data infrastructure, with effectiveness driven by access to large, well-managed datasets.

For Saudi organizations making significant investments in AI, this makes storage efficiency a financial consideration as much as a technical one. GPUs typically represent one of the largest cost items in AI budgets, and every hour they sit idle waiting for storage input or output represents wasted capital.

Undersized or poorly designed storage can therefore slow AI workloads and compromise the return on compute investment.

AI data, compliance and regulatory risk

Legal and regulatory obligations must also be factored into AI infrastructure planning.

In Saudi Arabia, organizations handling personal data must consider the Personal Data Protection Law and its requirements governing the transfer of personal data outside the Kingdom. SDAIA’s AI Ethics Principles and related governance guidance also provide a framework for the responsible use of AI, including data privacy, security, transparency and accountability.

Why proactive planning matters for AI ROI

The growth of AI and the vast volumes of data it generates are driving increasing demand for storage, creating supply-chain pressures and procurement challenges.

Existing HDD supply chains are already heavily constrained this year. This means organizations can no longer assume capacity will be available whenever they need it, particularly at short notice.

In practice, businesses need to forecast storage capacity alongside GPU procurement and include storage requirements in AI business cases from the outset.

Investment in storage infrastructure is expected to rise significantly, with IDC forecasting that the worldwide installed base of storage capacity will more than double to 26 zettabytes by 2030. The increase will be driven primarily by enterprise AI adoption, cloud infrastructure expansion and the growing strategic value of long-term data retention.

Given the scale of storage demand expected in the coming years, organizations should plan their AI and storage investments in tandem.

For Saudi organizations, the scale of AI investment makes this particularly important. Those that integrate storage planning into their AI strategy, treat data infrastructure as a strategic asset and prepare for future capacity needs will be best placed to maximize the value of their AI investments.

• Owais Mohammed is regional lead and director of sales for WD in the Middle East, Africa, Turkiye and the Indian subcontinent.