Inside Saudi Arabia’s Push to Become a Global AI Hub

Saudi Arabia is leveraging strategic partnerships with major tech firms to establish itself as a central hub for AI, a move that could reshape the global technology landscape.

Leading this initiative is Humain, a company backed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) that is orchestrating a series of collaborations to build the nation’s AI infrastructure.

Following the US-Saudi Investment Forum in Washington, DC, Humain reveals new alliances with tech leaders, including AWS, Nvidia, xAI, Adobe, Global AI, Groq, Luma, Qualcomm and Cisco.

These partnerships demonstrate a concerted effort to pivot towards a new primary export beyond oil, focusing instead on computational power and AI innovation.

The scale of this ambition is supported by key figures in the industry.

“AI is essential infrastructure: like electricity, every industry will use it and every country will build it,” says Jensen Huang, Founder and CEO of Nvidia.

This sentiment frames the country’s strategy to become indispensable in the new AI-based economy.

Humain and AWS to launch Riyadh AI Zone

A cornerstone of this strategy is the partnership between Humain and Amazon Web Services (AWS), which has been named Humain’s globally preferred AI partner.

The collaboration will establish a first-of-its-kind “AI Zone” in Riyadh, a project designed to handle compute-intensive applications such as AI model training and inference.

The infrastructure will be powered by Nvidia GB300 AI technologies and AWS’s own Trainium AI chips, with plans to deploy 150,000 AI accelerators.

This zone will provide customers with immediate access to leading foundation models through AWS Gen AI services like Amazon Bedrock, Amazon AgentCore and Amazon SageMaker, which could accelerate enterprise AI adoption in the region.

“This marks an important moment in our commitment to our partnership with Humain,” says Tanuja Randery, Managing Director, Europe, Middle East & Africa at AWS.

He adds: “By combining Humain’s local expertise and investment with AWS AI solutions – including our advanced infrastructure, hardware partnerships with Nvidia, the transformative AI platform Amazon Bedrock and AI solutions for business users, including Amazon Quick Suite – we’re establishing a world-class innovation hub that will serve customers across Saudi Arabia and around the globe.”

According to Tareq Amin, CEO of Humain, the AI Zone represents the beginning of a multi-gigawatt journey for the two companies.

How Nvidia’s partnership strengthens Saudi Arabia’s AI infrastructure

The collaboration with Nvidia is particularly central to Humain’s goals. Humain intends to deploy up to 600,000 of Nvidia’s latest AI infrastructure technologies over the next three years, including the highly sought-after Nvidia GB300 platforms.

This expanded partnership enables Humain to use Nvidia’s Nemotron open technologies to develop its conversational AI application, Humain Chat.

Furthermore, Humain is leveraging its own large language model, ALLAM, to bring AI advancements to the world’s 400 million Arabic speakers.

The agreement also allows Humain to integrate Nvidia Omniverse libraries, facilitating the creation of its sovereign AI infrastructure and a sophisticated digital twin ecosystem.

“Our continued partnership with Nvidia is central to Humain’s mission,” says Tareq.

He adds: “We are working together to advance global AI infrastructure. By expanding our compute capacity in both the U.S. and Saudi Arabia with the latest Nvidia AI infrastructure, Humain and our partners at Global AI, xAI and AWS, secure an even stronger strategic foothold.”

Building a global AI innovation engine

Humain’s strategy extends beyond Saudi borders, with plans to expand its Nvidia-powered data centre operations into the US. This dual presence in the US and Saudi Arabia is intended to create a powerful, integrated network for AI development.

“Saudi Arabia intends to be a leading global AI hub,” Jensen explains.

He adds: “With Nvidia-powered infrastructure deployed across the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, Humain and its partners are building the innovation engine for the new industrial revolution.”

This integrated approach gives Humain and its partners the scale and strategic position necessary to support future global AI innovation.

The combined force of these partnerships positions Humain to not only fuel Saudi Arabia’s AI ambitions but also to become a significant player on the international stage.