Baek Kyung-hoon (배경훈), South Korea’s deputy prime minister and science and ICT minister, met Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Communications and Information Technology Abdullah bin Amer Al-Swaha on July 16 to discuss cooperation in AI and digital fields. They shared a vision to expand policy investment and support in AI. Talks also covered cooperation on a Korean-style full-stack AI model, public sector AI transition, and digital infrastructure including cloud and AI data centres.

Oman has required licensed cryptocurrency mining companies to join a national, official bitcoin mining pool, opting for supervision rather than a ban or curbs. The government launched Omanhash.com as the only authorised pool for permitted miners in the country. The pool is expected initially to gather about 10 exahash per second of hashrate. The Ministry of Transport, Communications and Information Technology will run it with Frontier Technologies LLC, with infrastructure built by Enegix Global.