Twelve executives, including the CEO of Saudi Arabia’s NEOM, visited Seoul on the occasion of the NEOM City exhibition, the first of its kind in Asia.  Holding a media conference on July 25, the day before the opening of the NEOM exhibition at Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP) in Seoul, the executives emphasized that, actually, the NEOM City project is coming true.

The flight test campaign lasted over a week and built on 18 months of collaboration between NEOM, the General Authority of Civil Aviation (GACA), and Volocopter, with the aim of implementing and scaling an electric UAM ecosystem and testbed in NEOM. The parties worked closely to ensure full regulatory compliance and safety ahead of the test campaign.

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.