Saudi’s Dream Turned Into a Nightmare | How Billions Were Spent Chasing an Impossible City

They say in a lot of projects that happen in Saudi Arabia it can't be done. This is very ambitious. They can't keep saying that and we can't keep proving them wrong. Al Youm >> Ladies and gentlemen, Saudi Arabia's dream is turning into a nightmare. >> Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince, Mohammed bin [music] Salman, didn't just dream

big. He dreamed cinematic. >> We need to create new city for tomorrow. >> Is Saudi Arabia's much trumpeted futuristic eco-city NEOM already losing its shine? [music] >> Once envisioned to be the world's largest city by GDP, what you have today is a project that has collapsed. >> In 2017, the Prince of Saudi Arabia

announced a project so wild that it cost 8.8 trillion dollars. It was supposed to be taller than the Empire State Building. It had an upside-down skyscraper and even ski resorts inside a god damn desert. This dream project was supposed to run 170 kilometers long from the Red Sea straight into the mountains of Tabuk.

This was NEOM and that structure at the center, that was the line project. >> [music] >> Now, even though it seemed pretty ambitious, the world was fully convinced that Saudi Arabia can pull this off because they had every possible resource to make this project possible. They had trillions of dollars in cash. They had

the best architects in the world, the legendary consultants from BCG and McKinsey and they even had Sam Altman, Masayoshi Son and Travis Kalanick as their advisors. But even then the world is shocked to see that 9 years and 50 billion dollars later, 98% of the line is still unbuilt and the Saudi sovereign

wealth fund has suspended [music] construction. >> Multi-trillion-dollar [music] futuristic city in Saudi Arabia. Plans, it seems, are crumbling. >> [music] >> The project like NEOM is now in the doldrums and is not [music] happening anymore. >> The two NEOM contracts in Saudi Arabia were cancelled. >> [music] >> The question is, why was the Kingdom of