Neom
Based on Wikipedia: Neom
In the desert of northwestern Saudi Arabia, workers are dying at a rate of more than four per day. They're building a city that may never exist—at least not in the form its creators promised. This is the story of Neom, the most ambitious and troubled construction project in human history.
A Vision Born of Oil Anxiety
Saudi Arabia has a problem. The kingdom sits atop roughly seventeen percent of the world's proven oil reserves, and for decades, this black gold has funded everything—schools, hospitals, palaces, and a population that largely doesn't need to work. But oil is a finite resource, and the world is slowly, haltingly turning away from fossil fuels. What happens to a country whose entire economy depends on something the rest of the world is trying to quit?
This existential question gave birth to Saudi Vision 2030, an ambitious plan announced in 2016 to transform the kingdom into a diversified, modern economy. And the crown jewel of this vision? A futuristic megacity called Neom.
The name itself is a portmanteau—a linguistic mashup. The first three letters come from the Greek prefix "neo," meaning new. The final letter, M, represents the Arabic word "mustaqbal," meaning future. New future. It's the kind of name a committee of marketing consultants might produce, but it captured something real: Saudi Arabia's desperate hope to reinvent itself before time runs out.
The Announcement
On October 24, 2017, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman took the stage at the Future Investment Initiative conference in Riyadh. The event had attracted global titans of finance and technology, and bin Salman had something spectacular to show them.
He unveiled plans for a city unlike anything the world had ever seen. Neom would sprawl across 26,500 square kilometers of desert—an area roughly the size of Albania or Massachusetts. It would sit at the northern tip of the Red Sea, just east of Egypt across the Gulf of Aqaba and south of Jordan. The location was strategic: a crossroads where three continents meet, positioned to become a global trade hub.
But what made Neom truly audacious wasn't its size. It was everything else.
The city would operate independently from Saudi Arabia's existing government, with its own tax laws, labor laws, and judicial system. Robots would handle security, logistics, home delivery, and even caregiving. The entire metropolis would run on renewable energy—wind and solar only. There would be a floating industrial complex shaped like an octagon. Luxury resort islands. A mountain ski destination in the Arabian desert. And most famously, a linear city called "The Line"—a mirrored structure stretching 170 kilometers through the desert, housing nine million people in a building just 200 meters wide.
The initial price tag: 1.6 trillion dollars.
The Reality Check
Here's where fantasy collides with physics, economics, and human nature.
By July 2022—five years after the grand announcement—only two buildings had been constructed. Most of the project area remained bare desert, indistinguishable from the wilderness that had been there for millennia. The 2020 completion target for major portions came and went. The 2025 expansion deadline approached with little progress to show.
The costs exploded. That initial $1.6 trillion estimate? Eventually, projections ballooned to $8.8 trillion—more than twenty-five times Saudi Arabia's entire annual government budget. To put that in perspective, the entire gross domestic product of the United States is around $27 trillion. Neom was projected to cost roughly a third of the American economy.
In 2024, reports emerged that the project had been substantially scaled back from its original vision. Saudi officials denied this, but the evidence kept mounting. A Wall Street Journal investigation in 2025 uncovered an internal audit revealing extensive problems, including what the document called "evidence of deliberate manipulation" by the project's managers.
By 2025, new contracts for Neom had dried up entirely. Saudi Arabia's pre-budget statement for 2026 didn't mention Neom at all—a striking omission for what was supposedly the centerpiece of the nation's economic transformation.
The Emperor's New Clothes
Former employees who worked on Neom described something troubling about the project's culture. They compared it to Hans Christian Andersen's famous fairy tale "The Emperor's New Clothes"—the story where everyone pretends the emperor is wearing magnificent garments when he's actually naked, because no one dares tell him the truth.
Crown Prince bin Salman wasn't just a distant sponsor of Neom. He was the hands-on chair, deeply involved in day-to-day decisions. And according to former staff, he kept proposing increasingly bold ideas that his subordinates had serious concerns about. But dissent was ignored or punished. The culture made it nearly impossible to deliver bad news upward.
The project's CEO, Nadhmi Al-Nasr, faced accusations of promoting a management style that "belittled expatriates, made unrealistic demands, and neglected discrimination in the workplace." One former chief executive's resignation letter accused Al-Nasr's leadership of being "consistently inclusive of disparagement and inappropriately dismissive and demeaning outbursts." Present and former staff confirmed that Al-Nasr berated and scared his employees.
A few weeks after a grand opening party for one of Neom's components in October 2024, Al-Nasr was removed from his position.
Sindalah: A Case Study in Struggle
To understand Neom's challenges, look at Sindalah—a relatively modest piece of the larger puzzle. Sindalah was announced as a luxury island resort off the coast, featuring an 86-berth marina, three luxury hotels, and capacity for 2,400 daily visitors. A nine-hole golf course overlooking the sea was constructed in 2023.
In October 2024, Sindalah held a grand opening party. Celebrities and dignitaries attended. It seemed like a turning point—finally, something tangible.
But as of March 2025, Sindalah remained closed to the public. The grand opening was a party without an actual opening. The project had arrived three years behind schedule and cost three times its initial budget. And this was one of the simpler components of Neom.
The Human Cost
Behind the architectural renderings and press releases lies a darker reality.
Neom is being built in territory that wasn't empty. The Howeitat tribe has lived in this region for generations. When the project began, approximately 20,000 people faced forced relocation. Villages were razed. Thousands of people were moved against their will to make way for a city most of them would never be allowed to live in.
Some resisted. Abdul Rahim al-Huwaiti was killed by Saudi security forces under disputed circumstances while protesting his forced eviction. Three other members of the Howeitat tribe were sentenced to death for resisting evictions. Their crime: refusing to leave their ancestral homeland.
But the human toll extends far beyond the displaced locals. A 2024 documentary by the British television network ITV reported approximately 21,000 foreign worker deaths since construction began in 2017, with an additional 100,000 workers reported missing. These numbers, if accurate, would make Neom one of the deadliest construction projects in modern history.
The workers come primarily from India, Bangladesh, and Nepal—poor countries where the promise of Saudi wages draws desperate men willing to endure almost anything. What they find is something closer to indentured servitude.
Workers report sixteen-hour workdays for fourteen consecutive days in temperatures reaching 50 degrees Celsius—that's 122 degrees Fahrenheit, hot enough to kill. Many describe feeling like "trapped slaves." Some are required to pay fines equivalent to five months' salary if they want to leave their positions. In practice, this means they can't leave.
The death statistics tell a grim story. Government records from India, Bangladesh, and Nepal show that seventy to eighty percent of worker deaths are officially classified as "natural causes." But investigations reveal that many of these workers collapsed at their workplaces before dying. A healthy thirty-year-old man doesn't die of "natural causes" after working sixteen hours in extreme heat. Yet that's how Saudi authorities often record it.
At the Indian embassy in Riyadh alone, 1,420 Indian migrant worker deaths were recorded in 2023. Seventy-four percent were attributed to natural causes. In Bangladesh, 80 percent of 887 deaths during the first six months of 2024 received the same classification. The pattern is consistent and damning.
At least 13,685 Bangladeshis died in Saudi Arabia between 2008 and 2022. More than 1,500 died in 2022 alone. Approximately twenty percent of Neom's workforce comes from Bangladesh.
The Components of a Dream
Despite its troubles, Neom has announced a bewildering array of sub-projects, each more fantastical than the last.
Oxagon is planned as a floating industrial complex in the shape of an octagon—hence the name. Located about 25 kilometers north of the town of Duba, it would cover roughly 200 to 250 square kilometers, with about 40 square kilometers forming an actual city. Plans include a desalination plant, a hydrogen plant, and an oceanographic research center. The former port of Duba has already been renamed "the port of Neom."
Trojena, launched in March 2022, aims to be the first major outdoor skiing destination on the Arabian Peninsula. Yes, skiing in the desert. The site sits about 50 kilometers from the Gulf of Aqaba coast in the Sarat Mountains, at elevations between 1,500 and 2,600 meters. The climate there is considerably cooler than the surrounding region. Renowned architecture firm Zaha Hadid Architects designed a 330-meter-tall skyscraper for Trojena, a crystalline structure that would stand on a mountain overlooking an artificial lake, connected to the development below by cable car. In October 2022, Trojena was announced as the host of the 2029 Asian Winter Games.
Aquellum, announced in January 2024, would be what planners call a "subterranean digitalized community of the future." Described as an upside-down skyscraper, it would be dug into a 450-meter-high mountain, with access from an underwater square. The concept inverts traditional architecture—instead of building up toward the sky, you dig down into the earth.
Leyja is planned as an eco-tourism destination where 95 percent of the land area would be preserved as natural space. Three boutique hotels are planned, designed by some of the world's most prestigious architectural firms.
There are also plans for 6,500 hectares of agricultural fields—roughly 16,000 acres—relying heavily on genetically engineered crops. A subsidiary called ENOWA was founded to provide renewable energy, green hydrogen, and zero-waste desalination.
The Money Trail
Following the money reveals both the scale of ambition and the desperation to make something—anything—stick.
In January 2019, the Saudi government established a closed joint-stock company named Neom. The company is wholly owned by the Public Investment Fund, Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund. This fund, one of the largest in the world, manages hundreds of billions in assets and has been aggressively investing in everything from electric car companies to video game studios to professional golf.
Neom has pursued partnerships and sponsorships with almost frantic energy. In March 2020, the project signed on as a principal partner with the Mercedes-EQ Formula E racing team. In June 2022, Neom became the title sponsor of McLaren Racing's electric motorsport division. The project sponsored the Asian Football Confederation, hosted extreme motorsport events, and opened international offices in London and New York.
One of the most intriguing partnerships involves green hydrogen. In July 2020, American company Air Products and Chemicals announced it would build the world's largest green hydrogen plant in Saudi Arabia, a five-billion-dollar joint project with Saudi Arabia's ACWA Power and Neom. Green hydrogen—produced using renewable energy to split water molecules—is seen by some as the fuel of the future, a clean alternative to natural gas and coal.
Indian conglomerate Larsen and Toubro won a contract to build a 2,930-megawatt solar power plant, a 1,370-megawatt wind farm, a 400-megawatt battery storage system, and 190 kilometers of power transmission lines. These are real projects, actually being built. The renewable energy infrastructure may end up being Neom's most lasting legacy, even if the floating cities and mirrored linear metropolises never materialize.
The Israel Connection
One of the stranger subplots in the Neom story involves Israel, a country that Saudi Arabia doesn't officially recognize and has historically treated as an enemy.
Despite this antagonism, analysts suggest Saudi Arabia may be interested in Israeli intellectual and technological capabilities for Neom. Israel has become a global leader in high-tech industries, artificial intelligence, and water technology—exactly the expertise Neom's ambitious plans require.
According to reports in Israeli newspapers, there is evidence of coordination between Arab businessmen and diplomats in Tel Aviv, with Israeli companies reportedly positioned to secure contracts worth billions of dollars. The Saudi government is allegedly involved in these communications.
Some analysts have proposed that Neom could serve as an impetus for normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel—a business partnership that leads to diplomatic recognition. The project's location near the Gulf of Aqaba, close to both Israeli and Jordanian territory, would make such cooperation geographically convenient.
Whether this represents genuine strategic planning or wishful thinking remains unclear. But the mere fact that such discussions are apparently happening marks a significant shift from the region's recent past.
What Remains
As of 2025, Neom exists primarily as a collection of promises, a few scattered construction sites, and a mounting death toll among the workers trying to build it.
Some things are real. The airport at Sharma operates commercial flights between Riyadh and Neom, with a 3,757-meter runway and an official airport code (NUM) from the International Air Transport Association. Some infrastructure has been built. The renewable energy projects are progressing. A golf course overlooks the sea.
But the grand visions—the linear city housing nine million people, the floating octagonal industrial complex, the ski resort in the desert, the robot servants and autonomous judicial systems—remain renderings on screens, PowerPoint slides shown to investors, dreams that may or may not ever take physical form.
Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman has remained defiant. In 2023, he said of the project's critics: "They say in a lot of projects that happen in Saudi Arabia, it can't be done, this is very ambitious. They can keep saying that. And we can keep proving them wrong."
But the evidence keeps mounting that Neom, in its original conception, cannot be done—or at least cannot be done for any price Saudi Arabia is willing to pay, in any timeframe that makes economic sense. The internal audits, the scaled-back plans, the missing budget mentions, the fired CEO, the closed-but-opened resort—all point to a project in serious trouble.
The Deeper Question
Perhaps the most interesting thing about Neom isn't whether it succeeds or fails. It's what the project reveals about our moment in history.
A nation built on oil wealth looks at a world turning away from oil and responds by trying to will a new future into existence through sheer ambition and unlimited spending. The result is a project that combines genuine innovation—serious renewable energy infrastructure, forward-thinking urban concepts—with magical thinking and brutal human costs.
Neom represents both the best and worst impulses of modern megaprojects. The best: a willingness to think at vast scales, to imagine cities that might actually work better for human beings and the planet. The worst: a disregard for human rights, a culture that punishes truth-tellers, and a faith that money and power can overcome physical and economic reality.
Whether Neom ultimately becomes a functioning city, an expensive monument to hubris, or something in between, the world is watching. The project's fate will say something important about what's possible in the twenty-first century—and what isn't.
In the desert of northwestern Saudi Arabia, the future is being built. Or trying to be. The workers keep arriving, the sun keeps blazing at fifty degrees, and somewhere in a boardroom in Riyadh, the plans keep getting revised. The new future, it turns out, is complicated.