In a move that aims to solidify Saudi Arabia as a global tech hub, the gulf kingdom has launched a new firm called Humain, that will serve as an AI hub for sectors such as energy, health care, manufacturing and financial services.
The announcement comes just a day ahead of U.S. President Donald Trump’s official visit to the region, in which economic and technological MoUs are said to be the central theme surrounding his visit.
HUMAIN will be owned by the kingdom’s $925 billion Public Investment Fund and Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman will chair the new entity. The organisation will provide data centers, AI infrastructure and cloud capabilities, as well as Arabic large language models, according to a statement from the Saudi Press Agency.
AI is expected to be a central theme at the Saudi-US Investment Forum, which will take place on Tuesday and see participation from global tech giants like IBM, Qualcomm, Alphabet to name a few. Gulf News had quoted Research and Markets, who had forecasted investment worth $12 billion in new data centers in the Middle East and North Africa by 2027. Saudi Arabia currently accounts for nearly half of the region’s data center capacity, according to the firm.
Saudi Arabia is working to become a global tech hub as part of its big plan to diversify its economy. It’s launched major projects like a $100 billion investment in AI and is quickly growing its data centers and cloud services.
