Saudi AI firm Humain to launch data centers using US chips in 2026
Saudi Arabia’s newly established artificial intelligence company, Humain, has begun construction on its first data centers in the kingdom.
The company aims to have the facilities operational by early 2026, utilizing semiconductors imported from the United States, News.Az reports, citing Bloomberg.
Locations in the capital of Riyadh and the Eastern Province’s Dammam are expected to launch in the second quarter, with an initial capacity of as much as 100 megawatts each, according to Chief Executive Officer Tareq Amin.
Humain is in the process of procuring semiconductors for those data centers from US chipmakers, including Nvidia Corp., Amin said. The Saudi company has received local regulatory approval to purchase 18,000 of Nvidia’s latest AI chips, he added.
“It depends on the governance and the protocols and the approval of the US government, and these are formalities that we are going to start going through very, very soon,” Amin said in an interview on Monday on the sidelines of an event to mark the launch of Humain’s Arabic chatbot.
While Amin declined to offer a specific timeline, the comments indicate Saudi Arabia is pressing ahead with imports of AI chips. A visit by President Donald Trump in May cleared the pathway for the kingdom to get wider access to advanced semiconductors.
Humain, owned by the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, launched in May around the time of Trump’s visit. The hope is to turn the Gulf nation into a regional artificial intelligence superpower by building data centers, AI infrastructure and cloud capabilities. Humain plans to add 1.9 gigawatts’ worth of data centers by 2030.
The company is already working closely with California-based Groq Inc. to power AI chatbot Humain Chat and AI inference infrastructure, and will work together with the firm to scale further offerings in 2026. Humain Chat for now is only available in Saudi Arabia but will launch across the wider Middle East in October, Amin said.
The Saudi AI firm is also collaborating with Advanced Micro Devices Inc. on a joint venture that will likely see AMD own equity in a special purpose fund being created in the kingdom, Amin said. That’s part of a $10 billion deal the two companies signed earlier this year to build AI infrastructure.
Humain counts companies from Qualcomm Inc. to Cisco Systems Inc. as partners as well, and it’s in early talks with the Elon Musk AI startup xAI on a data center deal in Saudi Arabia, Bloomberg reported last month.
Humain Ventures, a $10 billion fund, launched this summer and has started deploying capital, Amin said, while declining to comment on what specific investments have been made to date.
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