"Unnamed sources told Bloomberg in April that The Line is scaling back from 170 kilometers long to just 2.4 kilometers, with the rest of the length to be completed after 2030. Neom expects The Line to be finished by 2045 now, 15 years later than initially planned."
The plan was never for 170km of The Line to be finished by 2030. The original plan was for 5km. And yes, recent reports are that they've scaled back their ambitions to half that by 2030.
However: 1. That has no bearing on how much they actually spend, which is what was being discussed and 2. Neom is much more than just The Line. As you can see from the YouTube link I posted, Sindalah seems to be on track to open this year, which is part of Neom.
So while Neom overall might be behind schedule (and The Line or other components may never open), it is clearly not an "imaginary" project given that parts of it will open soon.
It's not an "argument", it is a fact. Neom has many parts, one or more of those parts are finished. It is not an "imaginary" project, period. An imaginary project does not get to the construction phase. You cannot call this imaginary without significantly and unilaterally re-defining the meaning of that word.
From there, The Line =/= Neom. That said, 170km is still the plan for The Line – the first segment was supposed to be 5km by 2030, now it is 2.5km by 2030. And again, them not building as much as they said does not mean it is cheaper (cost is what we're discussing, after all). If anything it means they are already over budget.
Stargate is a new company, so OpenAI (a different company) having data centers does not seem relevant. Also, I do not think OpenAI actually does own any data centers – for the most part they've been using Azure infra AFAIK. But I did not claim that Stargate was imaginary, so I am unsure how this is a relevant point for you to make.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYimVfnGNGY
https://skift.com/2024/08/07/saudi-takes-2-million-photos-of...