Riyadh – Mubasher: Saudi Arabia's NEOM is in discussions with local and international companies to choose a lead partner for its first cloud computing deal that will lay the foundation for hi-tech services in its flagship $500 billion business zone, Reuters said.

"From a compute perspective, we're seeing lots of opportunities for partnerships with large, hyper-scale providers," head of technology and digital at NEOM, Joseph Bradley, told Reuters.

"We're in final stages of negotiations with several,” he added.

The talks come after a subsidiary of Saudi Aramco recently partnered with Google to bring its cloud services to the GCC state. Saudi Telecom Company (STC) struck a similar deal as well with Alibaba Cloud.

NEOM's flagship project is a carbon-free zone called The Line. Its construction will start this year and the first phase will be completed by 2025.