The 18 members of the board come from a diverse range of backgrounds including urban planning, architecture, design, technology, sustainability, energy and manufacturing - the key areas of NEOM.

“We welcome the global and diverse expertise of the advisory board and are confident that each of them will make huge contributions to the development of NEOM,” said NEOM CEO Nadhmi Al-Nasr.

“The advisory board will help shape NEOM’s future through its detailed knowledge and connections with potential long-term strategic partners.”

Gladstone Place Partners has hired Patricia Figueroa as SVP, advising clients on corporate issues and investor relations.

Prior to joining the corporate and financial firm, Figueroa led IR at Arconic since the company was founded in 2016 when it was spun off from aluminum company Alcoa, the firm said in a statement.  Gladstone is advising the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia on NEOM, a city development, via a contract worth $199,500, according to Foreign Agents Registration Act filings with the Justice Department. Gladstone is providing "comms and strategic advice" for U.S. audiences about NEOM, but is not contacting federal officials or seeking to influence policy.

Saudi Arabia has shelved a $200 billion plan with SoftBank Group Corp to build the world’s biggest solar-power-generation project, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal.

The project, which was announced by SoftBank in March, was expected to generate up to 200 gigawatts by 2030, more than the kingdom’s current capacity from all energy sources.

The WSJ report, which cited people familiar with the matter, noted that “no one is actively working on the project,” and instead, the Saudi kingdom is working up a “broader, more practical strategy to boost renewable energy,” to be announced in late October.

India’s Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Ahmad Javed has called on Indian engineers and other technical professionals “to grab the opportunities coming up within the framework of the Saudi Vision 2030.” 

Speaking as chairman and chief guest at a high-profile meeting of engineers in Riyadh recently, he said he was pleased to learn that 12 percent of all engineers in Saudi Arabia are Indian.  More than 300 engineers attended the event, which was organized by the Indian Engineers Forum (IEF) in Riyadh, a leading nonprofit professional organization that for 20 years has been working to share knowledge and forge connections.

An ultra-luxurious destination on Saudi Arabia’s northwestern coast of the Red Sea has been announced by the Kingdom’s Public Investment Fund (PIF).  The “Amaala” resort, already being dubbed the “Riviera of the Middle East”, will be focused upon wellness, healthy living and meditation and is located a few hundred miles down the Red Sea coast from NEOM in 2028.

NEOM was born from the ambition of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 to see the country develop into a pioneering and thriving model of excellence in various and important areas of life.

The team behind the NEOM mega-city project in Saudi Arabia said recently that they have begun environmental, archaeological and geological surveys to ensure successful and sustainable execution of future constructions.

NEOM was born from the ambition of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 to see the country develop into a pioneering and thriving model of excellence in various and important areas of life. A press statement released when the project was first announced in October last year, stated that NEOM aims to thrive the transformation of the Kingdom into a leading global hub through the introduction of value chains of industry and technology.

Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), led by Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman, is the GCC’s largest project developer with pre-execution projects worth $534bn (SAR2tn).

PIF is one of the seven Saudi organisations that make up 10 of the GCC’s largest project owners, and its most notable under-development assets include the $500bn (SAR1.9tn) NEOM City, in addition to the mixed-use Rou’a Al Madinah and Rou’a Al Haram, each valued at $10bn (SAR37.5bn).

The team behind the NEOM mega-city project in Saudi Arabia said they have begun environmental, archaeological and geological surveys to ensure successful and sustainable execution of future constructions.

“The NEOM team has begun environmental, archaeological and geological surveys to ensure that the execution of any future construction is well-planned and sustainable,” the team tweeted on Sunday.

NEOM was born from the ambition of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 to see the country develop into a pioneering and thriving model of excellence in various and important areas of life. According to a press release statement when the project was first announced in October last year, NEOM aims to thrive the transformation of the Kingdom into a leading global hub through the introduction of value chains of industry and technology.

A country’s window of opportunity in which to implement reforms such as NEOM typically comes around only once or twice in a generation. For this reason, Saudis have a profound interest in ensuring they get these reforms right - as does the United States, which can only benefit from a more open, prosperous, and socially tolerant Saudi partner in the Middle East.

Vision 2030 enumerates a very broad range of economic and social reforms, but is silent on the issue of political reform. If anything, Vision 2030 has become a vehicle for consolidating King Salman and his son Mohammed bin Salman’s political position. The latter’s stewardship of Vision 2030 helped burnish his public image and ease his accession to Crown Prince.