Saudi Arabia’s the Line is collapsing into a hyphen

Saudi Arabia is officially gutting Neom and turning the Line into a server farm. After a year-long review triggered by financial reality, the Financial Times reports that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s flagship project is being “significantly downscaled.” The futuristic linear city known as the Line, originally designed to stretch 150 miles across the desert, is scrapping its sci-fi ambitions to become a far smaller project focused on industrial sectors, says the Financial Times. It’s a rumor that the Saudis originally dismissed when The Guardian first reported on it in 2024. The redesign confirms what skeptics have long suspected: The laws of physics and economics have finally breached the walls of the kingdom’s futuristic Saudi Vision 2030, a country reconversion program aimed at lowering Saudi Arabia’s dependency on oil and transforming the country into a more modern society.

The glossy renderings of the mile-long skyscraper and vertical forests that was the Line are now dissolving into a pragmatic, if desperate, attempt to salvage the sunk costs. The development, once framed as a “civilization revolution” was originally imagined as a 105-mile long, 1,640-foot high, 656-foot wide car-free smart city designed to house 9 million residents. The redesign pivots toward making Neom a hub for data centers to support the kingdom’s aggressive AI push. An insider told the Financial Times the logic is purely utilitarian: “Data centers need water cooling and this is right on the coast,” signaling that the ambitious city has been downgraded to server farm with a view of the Red Sea.​

The end of the line

The scaling back follows years of operational chaos and financial bleeding. Since its 2017 launch, the project promised a 105-mile strip of high-density living. But reality struck early. By April 2024, The Guardian reported that planners were already being forced to slash the initial phase to just 2.4 kilometers (1.5 miles) by 2030, reducing the projected population from 1.5 million to fewer than 300,000.​

While the public infrastructure stalled—leaving what critics called “giant holes in the middle of nowhere”—satellite imagery revealed that construction resources were successfully diverted to a massive royal palace with 16 buildings and a golf course. Internally, the situation was dire. The Wall Street Journal reported an audit revealing “deliberate manipulation of finances” by management to justify soaring costs, with the “end-state” estimate ballooning to an impossible $8.8 trillion—more than 25 times the annual Saudi budget.​

The turmoil culminated in the abrupt departure of longtime CEO Nadhmi al-Nasr in November 2024, leaving behind a legacy marred by allegations of abuse. An ITV documentary claimed 21,000 workers had died since the inception of Saudi Vision 2030, with laborers describing 16-hour shifts for weeks on end. Even completed projects failed to launch; the high-end island resort Sindalah sat idle despite being finished, reportedly plagued by design flaws that prevented its opening.

By July 2025, the sovereign wealth fund—facing tightening liquidity and oil prices hovering around $71 a barrel—finally hit the brakes. Bloomberg reported that Saudi Arabia had hired consultants to conduct a “strategic review” to determine if the Line was even feasible. The goal was to “recalibrate” Vision 2030, a polite euphemism for slashing expenditures as the kingdom faced hard deadlines for the 2030 Expo and the 2034 World Cup.

The review’s conclusion is stripping away even the most publicized milestones. Trojena, the ski resort that defied meteorological logic, will no longer host the Asian Winter Games in 2029 as planned. The resort is being downsized, a casualty of the realization that the kingdom needs to “prioritize market readiness and sustainable economic impact” over snow in the desert.​

What remains of the Line will be unrecognizable to those who bought into the sci-fi dream. The Financial Times says that sources briefed on the redesign state it will be a “totally different concept” that utilizes existing infrastructure in a “totally different manner.” The new Neom CEO, Aiman al-Mudaifer, is now tasked with managing a “modest” development that aligns with the Public Investment Fund’s need to actually generate returns rather than burn cash.​

Even bin Salman has publicly given up, although he’s framing it not as a failure but a strategic pivot. Addressing the Shura Council—a consultative body for the kingdom—he framed the move as flexibility, stating, “we will not hesitate to cancel or make any radical amendment to any programs or targets if we find that the public interest so requires.”

And that’s how a “civilization revolution” ends, my friends, not with a bang, but with a whimper. The hum of cooling fans in yet another farm producing AI slop that always was (and still is) more believable than the Line and Neom projects.

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