Gamers8 Riyadh Set Alight with $2Mln in Prizes at Fortnite Tournament

Crowds at the Gamer8 event in Riyadh. (Saleh al-Ghannam)
Crowds at the Gamer8 event in Riyadh. (Saleh al-Ghannam)
TT

Gamers8 Riyadh Set Alight with $2Mln in Prizes at Fortnite Tournament

Crowds at the Gamer8 event in Riyadh. (Saleh al-Ghannam)
Crowds at the Gamer8 event in Riyadh. (Saleh al-Ghannam)

An elite Fortnite tournament, one of many organized within the framework of the Gamers8 Esports and Music Festival organized by the Saudi Esports Federation, will launch at Boulevard of Riyadh on Thursday.

The tournament will see some of the most prominent names in esports take part and compete for two million dollars in prizes. The event concludes on Sunday.

This Gamers8 Esports and Music Festival tournament will be followed by a Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six tournament, which will see some of the world’s best teams compete for 1.2 million dollars in prizes between August 4 and 7.

After that, a PUBG Mobile tournament will be held between August 11 and 13 and August 18 and 20.

The Gamers8 Esports and Music Festival kicked off on July 14 with a Rocket League tournament that went on until July 17 before the Riyadh Masters, which ran from July 20 to 24.

Gamers8 offers gamers a unique experience, as it will feature a range of events and concerts held every weekend for two months.

Established in 2017, the Saudi Esports Federation aims to support and strengthen the local gaming community.

It has organized an array of national and international tournaments over the past four years, drawing massive local and foreign investments



Microsoft to Invest $3 Bln to Expand AI, Cloud Capacity in India

26 March 2021, Bavaria, Munich: The Microsoft logo hangs on the facade of an office building in Parkstadt Schwabing in the north of the Bavarian capital. (dpa)
26 March 2021, Bavaria, Munich: The Microsoft logo hangs on the facade of an office building in Parkstadt Schwabing in the north of the Bavarian capital. (dpa)
TT

Microsoft to Invest $3 Bln to Expand AI, Cloud Capacity in India

26 March 2021, Bavaria, Munich: The Microsoft logo hangs on the facade of an office building in Parkstadt Schwabing in the north of the Bavarian capital. (dpa)
26 March 2021, Bavaria, Munich: The Microsoft logo hangs on the facade of an office building in Parkstadt Schwabing in the north of the Bavarian capital. (dpa)

Microsoft will invest about $3 billion to expand capacity for artificial intelligence and its Azure cloud-computing services in India, CEO Satya Nadella said on Tuesday.

The tech giant is the latest to pledge investment in India, a country seen as a key growth market for US technology companies thanks to its population of more than 1.4 billion people and low-cost internet access.

Executives ranging from Nvidia chief Jensen Huang to Meta's chief AI scientist Yann LeCun have visited India in recent months.

The $3 billion investment in India would be the "single largest expansion" done in the country, Nadella said at a conference in the southern Indian city of Bengaluru.

Microsoft will also train 10 million people in AI in India by 2030, Nadella said.

When Nadella visited India early last year, he announced the company will provide 2 million people in the country with AI skilling opportunities by 2025, focused on training individuals in smaller cities as well as rural areas.

Nadella met Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday, and the pair discussed "tech, innovation and AI" and "Microsoft's ambitious expansion and investment plans in India."

Microsoft has been pouring billions of dollars into expanding capacity across the globe to boost AI infrastructure and its data-center network.

The company last week unveiled plans to invest about $80 billion in fiscal 2025.

The investment, more than half of which will be in the United States, will focus on developing data centers to train AI models and deploy AI and cloud-based applications.