Saudi Arabia has announced a new venture in artificial intelligence, called Humain, valued at tens of billions of dollars under the chairmanship of the Saudi Arabian crown prince, Mohammed. The launch is just one day before Donald Trump’s former US president visit to Riyadh; this is part of the three-nation Gulf tour. The firm will lead the kingdom in AI investments and strategy while it endeavours to become a regional and global leader in AI.
Humain will be an investor and operator in technologies of AI. It will concentrate on developing infrastructure, including data centres, and will create large language models in the Arabic language and target the larger market in the Middle East. Talking about its capital size, it though hasn’t been disclosed, but the project is invested in by Saudi Arabia’s powerful Public Investment Fund (PIF), which manages assets worth $940 billion.
The kingdom considers AI to be one of the key pillars of its broader efforts to diversify its economy from oil. The announcement of Humain brings some degree of clarification of Riyadh’s previously dispersed AI aspirations. Costs associated with creating large-scale AI systems require massive infrastructure that ranges from the consumption of energy to high-end computing chips. The company is set to deal with this through building in-country capabilities.
Humain will follow in the footsteps of established PIF-backed tech companies, including Alat, whose spending on AI and hardware should reach $100 billion by 2030. Other mega tech collaborations include that of Aramco Digital with the US chipmaker Groq, which seeks to create the largest inferencing data centre in the world in Saudi Arabia. Another chipmaker, Cerebras, has also signed a deal with Aramco.
Trump’s visit will fall in line with a US-Saudi investment forum in Riyadh where various AI and defence deals are likely to be signed. Elon Musk of Tesla, as well as Sam Altman of OpenAI, will be among those in attendance. The event is aimed at strengthening links between US tech companies and the investors from the Gulf. The US Treasury has come up with a fast-track scheme to stimulate more Gulf investments into AI firms and tech bases in America.
Saudi Arabia is not the only one running towards AI leadership. In the UAE, the AI flagship company G42 has been built, supported by Microsoft. Abu Dhabi has also established MGX, which is a fund that specialises in US tech investment. Qatar will announce new AI deals in the course of Trump’s visit. Although the spending overseas has reduced, Riyadh is taking investments in AI in areas such as education sectors seriously, especially if Prince Mohammed had promised $600 billion by US investments within 4 years.
