Originally envisioned as an extravagant 105-mile-long smart city, the Line is reportedly shrinking into a pragmatic data center hub. 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.