The last century rewarded nations that produced energy. The next will reward those that produce intelligence.For decades, barrels of oil were more than a commodity. They represented economic output, industrial capacity and national competitiveness. They fueled factories, transportation and global growth.Today, a new economic output is emerging: tokens.Every interaction with an AI model, whether answering a question, generating code, accelerating scientific research or enabling autonomous systems, is measured in tokens. They are the building blocks of AI and the units through which intelligence is created and delivered.Just as barrels fueled the industrial economy, tokens will increasingly fuel the intelligence economy.This is not about replacing energy. Quite the opposite. Intelligence depends on energy. But as AI becomes embedded across every sector, the ability to transform energy, computing and data into useful intelligence will become a defining measure of economic competitiveness.Saudi Arabia enters this era from a position of strength.The Kingdom understands better than most nations that long-term prosperity is built not simply by owning strategic resources, but by investing in the infrastructure, expertise and ecosystems needed to transform those resources into lasting economic value.That same principle now applies to AI.The economic opportunity is already significant. PwC estimates artificial intelligence could contribute more than US$135 billion to Saudi Arabia’s economy by 2030, equivalent to 12.4% of GDP, while contributing approximately US$320 billion across the Middle East.Capturing that opportunity will depend on more than deploying AI applications. It will require producing intelligence at scale.While training remains essential to advancing AI models, the next phase of AI adoption will increasingly be defined by inference, the large-scale deployment of those models across enterprises, industries and everyday applications.AI advances through a continuous cycle of training and inference. As models become more capable, they are deployed to generate answers, recommendations, predictions and actions, while their outputs, usage patterns and feedback help inform the next generation of models. As AI adoption accelerates, inference is becoming the dominant driver of AI compute demand, occurring continuously across millions of users and applications every second.Training creates capability.Inference creates value.Every inference generates tokens. Demand for tokens has been growing rapidly alongside the adoption of generative AI. The rise of AI agents will accelerate this trend further, as autonomous systems perform multi-step reasoning, planning and execution, generating significantly more inference requests across business operations, scientific discovery, public services and industrial processes.The countries that succeed will not simply be those with the largest AI infrastructure. They will be those capable of producing the greatest amount of useful intelligence efficiently, sustainably and at scale.Saudi Arabia is already building many of the foundations required for that future.National AI initiatives are expanding computing capacity. STC is helping organisations access cloud, AI and data services across the Kingdom. Research institutions such as King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) continue advancing AI-enabled scientific research in fields ranging from energy to environmental science. Together, these efforts are strengthening the ecosystem needed to transform infrastructure into innovation and innovation into economic growth.Energy will remain central to this transformation.The International Energy Agency projects that global electricity demand from data centres could more than double by 2030, driven largely by AI. As intelligence becomes a strategic resource, producing it efficiently will become as important as producing it at scale.Performance per watt is therefore no longer simply an engineering metric. It is becoming an economic one.More efficient AI infrastructure enables more intelligence to be generated using the same amount of energy, lowering costs, and extending access to AI across more industries.This is where Saudi Arabia’s experience matters.For decades, the Kingdom demonstrated how strategic investment, engineering excellence and long-term planning could transform energy into economic growth. The intelligence economy will demand the same disciplines.The countries that lead will not necessarily be those with the most data, the largest models or the greatest computing capacity. They will be those that build complete ecosystems capable of transforming infrastructure into intelligence and intelligence into productivity.Oil powered the industrial economy. Tokens will power the intelligence economy.Saudi Arabia helped define one era of global growth. It now has the opportunity to help define the next.References1. PwC – The Potential Impact of Artificial Intelligence in the Middle EastAI could contribute US$135.2 billion to Saudi Arabia (12.4% of GDP) and US$320 billion across the Middle East by 2030.https://www.pwc.com/m1/en/publications/potential-impact-artificial-intelligence-middle-east.html2. International Energy Agency – Energy and AIData-centre electricity demand is projected to more than double by 2030, with AI as the largest driver.https://www.iea.org/reports/energy-and-ai3. STC GroupOverview of STC’s cloud, AI and digital infrastructure capabilities.https://www.stc.com.sa/content/stcgroupwebsite/sa/en/who-we-are/group-subsidiaries.html4. King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)High-performance computing and AI research.https://cs.kaust.edu.sa/research-areas/high-performance-computing-and-big-dataThe last century rewarded nations that produced energy. The next will reward those that produce intelligence.For decades, barrels of oil were more than a commodity. They represented economic output, industrial capacity and national competitiveness. They fueled factories, transportation and global growth.Today, a new economic output is emerging: tokens.Every interaction with an AI model, whether answering a question, generating code, accelerating scientific research or enabling autonomous systems, is measured in tokens. They are the building blocks of AI and the units through which intelligence is created and delivered.Just as barrels fueled the industrial economy, tokens will increasingly fuel the intelligence economy.This is not about replacing energy. Quite the opposite. Intelligence depends on energy. But as AI becomes embedded across every sector, the ability to transform energy, computing and data into useful intelligence will become a defining measure of economic competitiveness.Saudi Arabia enters this era from a position of strength.The Kingdom understands better than most nations that long-term prosperity is built not simply by owning strategic resources, but by investing in the infrastructure, expertise and ecosystems needed to transform those resources into lasting economic value.That same principle now applies to AI.The economic opportunity is already significant. PwC estimates artificial intelligence could contribute more than US$135 billion to Saudi Arabia’s economy by 2030, equivalent to 12.4% of GDP, while contributing approximately US$320 billion across the Middle East.Capturing that opportunity will depend on more than deploying AI applications. It will require producing intelligence at scale.While training remains essential to advancing AI models, the next phase of AI adoption will increasingly be defined by inference, the large-scale deployment of those models across enterprises, industries and everyday applications.AI advances through a continuous cycle of training and inference. As models become more capable, they are deployed to generate answers, recommendations, predictions and actions, while their outputs, usage patterns and feedback help inform the next generation of models. As AI adoption accelerates, inference is becoming the dominant driver of AI compute demand, occurring continuously across millions of users and applications every second.Training creates capability.Inference creates value.Every inference generates tokens. Demand for tokens has been growing rapidly alongside the adoption of generative AI. The rise of AI agents will accelerate this trend further, as autonomous systems perform multi-step reasoning, planning and execution, generating significantly more inference requests across business operations, scientific discovery, public services and industrial processes.The countries that succeed will not simply be those with the largest AI infrastructure. They will be those capable of producing the greatest amount of useful intelligence efficiently, sustainably and at scale.Saudi Arabia is already building many of the foundations required for that future.National AI initiatives are expanding computing capacity. STC is helping organisations access cloud, AI and data services across the Kingdom. Research institutions such as King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) continue advancing AI-enabled scientific research in fields ranging from energy to environmental science. Together, these efforts are strengthening the ecosystem needed to transform infrastructure into innovation and innovation into economic growth.Energy will remain central to this transformation.The International Energy Agency projects that global electricity demand from data centres could more than double by 2030, driven largely by AI. As intelligence becomes a strategic resource, producing it efficiently will become as important as producing it at scale.Performance per watt is therefore no longer simply an engineering metric. It is becoming an economic one.More efficient AI infrastructure enables more intelligence to be generated using the same amount of energy, lowering costs, and extending access to AI across more industries.This is where Saudi Arabia’s experience matters.For decades, the Kingdom demonstrated how strategic investment, engineering excellence and long-term planning could transform energy into economic growth. The intelligence economy will demand the same disciplines.The countries that lead will not necessarily be those with the most data, the largest models or the greatest computing capacity. They will be those that build complete ecosystems capable of transforming infrastructure into intelligence and intelligence into productivity.Oil powered the industrial economy. Tokens will power the intelligence economy.Saudi Arabia helped define one era of global growth. It now has the opportunity to help define the next.References1. PwC – The Potential Impact of Artificial Intelligence in the Middle EastAI could contribute US$135.2 billion to Saudi Arabia (12.4% of GDP) and US$320 billion across the Middle East by 2030.https://www.pwc.com/m1/en/publications/potential-impact-artificial-intelligence-middle-east.html2. International Energy Agency – Energy and AIData-centre electricity demand is projected to more than double by 2030, with AI as the largest driver.https://www.iea.org/reports/energy-and-ai3. STC GroupOverview of STC’s cloud, AI and digital infrastructure capabilities.https://www.stc.com.sa/content/stcgroupwebsite/sa/en/who-we-are/group-subsidiaries.html4. King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)High-performance computing and AI research.https://cs.kaust.edu.sa/research-areas/high-performance-computing-and-big-data
From barrels to tokens: Why the next economy will be measured in intelligence
