The amount of data in the world is growing exponentially. Internet users today are generating 2,500,000,000,000,000,000 (2.5 quintillion) bytes of data every day. There’s so much data being generated that it’s hard for businesses to take advantage of it all – 95% of businesses find that even their own data is hard to use.

90% of the world’s data has been created in the past two years alone. Leading companies are using data science and AI to turn this vast quantity of data to their advantage. It’s how Netflix saves over $1 billion on customer retention annually.

KAUST and SDAIA are partnering to train the next generation of data scientists. At KAUST Academy, already hundreds of data scientists have been trained. The Academy conducts intensive 3–5 day workshops, covering all aspects of applied data science and AI. They plan to scale up to train 1,000 data scientists over the next year.

Over the next three years, the SDAIA-KAUST AI Center will be funding 20 AI research projects, and they will also be developing 10 data science and AI solutions. These efforts will address challenges in healthcare, the environment, water, food and energy.