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The scale of Saudi Arabia’s artificial intelligence ambitions came into sharp focus at the Future Investment Initiative (FII) in Riyadh. Public Investment Fund–backed HUMAIN, which is less than six months old, is striking deals with some of the biggest names in energy, finance, and technology — part of a sweeping plan to position the kingdom as the third-largest AI infrastructure provider, after the US and China.
Aramco will become a “significant” minority shareholder, and the world’s biggest oil exporter will contribute its “AI assets, capabilities and talent into HUMAIN,” the company said in a statement. HUMAIN signed a $3 billion agreement with AirTrunk, backed by Blackstone, to build a large-scale data center campus in Saudi Arabia. And California’s Qualcomm Technologies, which plans to manufacture an AI chip to rival market-leader Nvidia, chose HUMAIN as its first customer.
The company is also planning to IPO: “In three to four years, this company needs to be listed,” said CEO Tareq Amin, and will consider floating shares in Saudi Arabia and the US.
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HUMAIN was created this year to consolidate and accelerate Saudi Arabia’s AI investments and position the kingdom as a hub for computing power. It aims to have six gigawatts of computing capacity by 2034. “What we can offer is simple: abundant land, cheap and reliable energy, and strong connectivity,” Amin said at FII on Tuesday.
The flurry of deals comes amid increasing investment in the Gulf, and globally, to build out the infrastructure that will drive AI applications. HUMAIN is investing broadly, forging crucial partnerships with suppliers, rolling out homegrown software and hardware, and pitching global firms with the promise of cheaper and faster computing power.
HUMAIN plans to deploy 200 megawatts worth of the AI200 and AI250 chips in data centers in the kingdom by next year, Qualcomm said in a statement. The chips will primarily be used for inferencing, a kind of querying of a large language model so a chatbot can generate an answer. The company is also in talks with AWS and Google, Amin said, and is looking to attract early-stage AI startups to Riyadh, with incentives like access to data centers and free tools, like a new work management software platform it introduced this week, called HUMAIN One.
In May, during US President Donald Trump’s visit to Riyadh, HUMAIN announced a partnership with Nvidia to deploy 500 megawatts of power with hundreds of thousands of GPUs powered by Nvidia’s Grace Blackwell chips, its most advanced, The Wall Street Journal reported. The Trump administration has not yet publicly greenlit those exports.