Saudi Arabia has attracted more than $9 billion in investments in future technologies, including by U.S. giants Microsoft (MSFT.O) and Oracle Corp (ORCL.N), which are building cloud regions in the kingdom, a government minister said on Monday.

Saudi Minister of Communication and Information Technology Abdullah Alswaha said Microsoft will invest $2.1 billion in a global super-scaler cloud, while Oracle has committed $1.5 billion to build a new cloud region in Riyadh.

The kingdom has been pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into an economic plan, known as Vision 2030, led by its de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

But it has struggled to attract foreign direct investment (FDI), one of the pillars of Vision 2030, which aims to diversify the economy away from oil.

The minister said China’s Huawei (HWT.UL) will also invest $400 million in cloud infrastructure for its services in Saudi Arabia and another cloud region in partnership with oil giant Aramco (2222.SE).

An additional $4.5 billion was invested in global and local assets across multiple sectors at the forum, Alswaha added.

Tonomus, a subsidiary of the $500 billion signature NEOM project of the crown prince, said last year it invested $1 billion in 2022 in AI, including a metaverse platform.

Increased demand for cloud computing has pushed technology companies such as Oracle, Microsoft, Amazon (AMZN.O) and Alphabet’s Google (GOOGL.O) to set up data centres across the world to speed up data transfer.

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