TRO | Saudi Arabia Announces US$15 Billion In AI Deals As Gulf Race Accelerates

Plus, ChatGPT Ads Hit US$1 Billion In Revenue In Under 200 Days and Snowflake Stock Surges 22%

Author

Meliora Company
September 07, 2026 • Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

 Subscribe | 7th September, 2026

In this fast-moving Vertical AI economy, headlines are everywhere but optimism is rare.

Here’s our take on 3 stories that will help you be relentlessly optimistic about the future.

1. Saudi Arabia Announces US$15 Billion In AI Deals As The Gulf’s AI Race Accelerates

Saudi Arabia's LEAP technology conference opened last week with US$15 billion in planned technology investments and strategic commitments. Together AI signed an agreement with Saudi-backed HUMAIN to build a 250 megawatt AI data centre expected to generate more than US$5 billion in gross annualised revenue in its first year. AWS expanded its own partnership with HUMAIN targeting 50 megawatts of capacity in Saudi Arabia's first AI Zone by 2028. SpaceXAI announced plans to build its first data centre outside the US, initially targeting 50 megawatts before scaling to 500 megawatts. Since LEAP launched in 2022, Saudi Arabia's digital economy has grown 69% to US$199 billion.

Here’s why this matters: Saudi Arabia and the UAE are now in a serious competition to become the Middle East's dominant AI hub, and LEAP is where Riyadh makes its most visible moves. The scale of commitments this week confirms that Gulf sovereign capital is no longer content to fund AI from the outside. It is building the infrastructure itself, on its own soil, with its own rules. For the broader TMT industry, the emergence of the Gulf as a genuine third geography in the AI infrastructure race alongside the US and China has significant implications for where compute gets built, who controls it, and which regulatory environments future AI development operates within.

2. ChatGPT Ads Hits US$1 Billion In Revenue In Under 200 Days

ChatGPT Ads has reached US$1 billion in annualised revenue less than 200 days after launch, with tens of thousands of advertisers now active on the platform across more than 40 countries. Self-service access through Ads Manager has expanded today to India, Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. Small and medium-sized businesses now represent a material share of revenue, with one ecommerce advertiser reporting a 3x return on ad spend over 28 days and a technology partner reporting that more than 80% of ad-driven ChatGPT traffic came from new customers. Advertising sits alongside subscriptions, enterprise products, and API access as one of four revenue pillars for OpenAI.

Here’s why this matters: This milestone establishes ChatGPT as a serious advertising platform rather than a subscription-only business. A billion weekly active users coming to ChatGPT with specific goals and intent, rather than passively browsing, represents a fundamentally different advertising environment to the one that exists on social media or search. Intent-driven advertising has historically commanded premium CPMs. If ChatGPT can maintain user trust while scaling the ad business, OpenAI has found a third revenue engine to sit alongside subscriptions and enterprise. The question the industry will be asking now is when Claude follows.

3. Snowflake Stock Surges 22% As Its AI Coding Agent Drives Record Growth

Snowflake reported Q2 revenue of US$1.55 billion, up 35% year on year, beating analyst expectations of US$1.48 billion, with adjusted earnings per share of US$0.62 against a consensus of US$0.45. Product revenue of US$1.49 billion grew 37%, marking the second consecutive quarter of record sequential dollar growth. The company's AI coding agent CoCo now has 9,100 accounts, adding more than 2,000 during the quarter, with management crediting AI workloads for approximately half of the growth acceleration. Full-year product revenue guidance was raised to US$6.07 billion from US$5.84 billion.

Here’s why this matters: Three weeks after Salesforce silenced SaaSpocalypse fears, Snowflake has delivered the same answer from a different part of the enterprise stack. Investors spent much of the first half of 2026 selling software companies on the theory that AI agents would make data platforms redundant. Snowflake's results argue the opposite: enterprises adopting AI need more data infrastructure, not less, and the platforms closest to that data are capturing the growth. For the TMT industry, the pattern now emerging across Microsoft, Palantir, Salesforce, and Snowflake is consistent enough to call a trend. AI is not eating enterprise software, but becoming its biggest driver.

Meliora Creative Announces New Partnerships

The Meliora Company has announced the first partnerships for Meliora Creative, its creative IP arm, with Spotwise.ai, OM Sound & Vision and allt.tv, bringing new ways for media and entertainment to be operated, experienced and commercialised.

The partnerships build on Meliora’s three-pillar model across Advisory, Ventures and Creative: helping organisations navigate change, investing in emerging technology, and working alongside founders to build and commercialise new products and intelligent experiences.

Read more at Mediaweek Australia for the thesis behind Meliora Creative.

Meliora Is The Youth Fund Sponsor For Radiodays Asia 2026

We’re delighted to be named as the Youth Fund Sponsor for Radiodays Asia, helping to support the next generation of radio, podcasting and audio talent in Jakarta.

Still Curious?

Our Pursuit Of Better

AfterQuery, an AI training-data start-up founded by two founders aged 22 and 23, has reportedly raised a round valuing it at US$3.2 billion, more than 10 times its valuation from five months ago, making it Y Combinator's fastest ever start-up to reach unicorn status. The company trains AI models and agents to work like professionals by encoding the reasoning and decision patterns of doctors, lawyers, and other specialists.

Palo Alto Networks has acquired Console, a two-year-old AI start-up that automates routine IT help desk tasks using AI agents, for US$500 million in cash and stock. Console had raised just US$29 million across two rounds and was valued at US$157 million before the deal, representing a rapid return for investors. Console's technology will be integrated into Cortex, Palo Alto's AI security platform.

Ultrahuman, the Indian smart ring start-up, has raised US$70 million at a US$365 million valuation, tripling its 2023 valuation. The company is working with Qualcomm on a new ring that will run software directly on the device, opening it beyond health tracking to AI interaction, gaming, and developer-built applications. They are targeting US$200 million in annualised revenue by January 2027.

The Pursuit of Better, Together

If this week’s newsletter sparked something, pass it on to a colleague. The best conversations often start with “You’ve got to read this”.

/