TONOMUS, NEOM’s cognitive technology company, has announced the opening of its first digital communications facility. The TONOMUS.NEOM Telecommunications Center contains a high-capacity, highly efficient data center and associated infrastructure to enhance the availability, resilience and growth of 5G, satellite and fiber cable network connectivity, and enable the provision of secure private cloud services in the NEOM region. On-site offices and facilities within the Center will support day-to-day operations and collaboration with telecommunications industry partners.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s delegation have invited young entrepreneurs to expand their businesses into the Kingdom and join NEOM — the Kingdom’s flagship 500-billion dollars smart city project, the Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reported.  The announcement came during the conclusion ceremony of the G20 Young Entrepreneurs’ Alliance (YEA) 2023 Summit in New Delhi, India, which ran from July 13 to July 15.

Saudi filmmaker Abdulaziz Alshlahei (“The Tambour of Retribution,” “Zero Distance”) is set to direct timely drama “Hobal,” about a Saudi family living in isolation in the desert during the early 1990s. The film will be shot in NEOM, the sprawling production hub in Saudi Arabia’s northwestern corner. “Hobal” will be Alshlahei’s third feature, segueing from his groundbreaking social issues drama “The Tambour of Retribution,” about the forbidden love between an executioner’s son and a wedding drummer’s daughter in turn-of-the-century Riyadh. “Tambour” scored two prizes at the Cairo Film Festival, was released on Netflix, and was Saudi Arabia’s submission for the 2022 best international feature film Oscar.

In a bid to empower local communities, NEOM is offering over 1,500 job opportunities to qualified children from the region in more than 20 national and international companies participating in the second edition of its Partners Employment Forum. Taking place at the University of Tabuk, the two-day forum that began on Wednesday aims to attract top talents in order to involve them in achieving sustainable growth within the Kingdom’s $500 billion giga-project and beyond.  

Saudi Arabia will prove wrong the doubters who believe the Kingdom’s megaprojects, including THE LINE in NEOM, cannot be built, Saudi Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman said, according to a report by Oil and Gas Middle East. “They say about a lot of projects happening in Saudi Arabia ‘It can’t be done [and] this is very ambitious.’ They can keep saying that and we can keep proving them wrong,” the Crown Prince said.

NEOM green hydrogen project is formally under execution: ACWA Power. Saudi Arabia’s sustainability journey is expected to accelerate as the world’s largest green hydrogen project in the $500 billion giga-project NEOM has formally entered the construction stage.

In a recent article published in the journal NPJ Urban Sustainability, Rafael Prieto-Curiel and Daniel Kondor from Complexity Science Hub Vienna have examined the potential mobility obstacles that could be encountered in THE LINE, the linear city planned in Saudi Arabia. The article titled “Arguments for Building The Circle and not THE LINE in Saudi Arabia” puts forward the notion that a linear layout may not be the most efficient choice for a city.