Saudi Arabia is making a bold bid to lead artificial intelligence in the Middle East, anchored by a $10 billion venture capital fund and a massive $77 billion investment in AI infrastructure. The vehicle driving this push is Humain, a government-backed firm chaired by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and central to the kingdom's Vision 2030 strategy to diversify beyond oil.
Humain Ventures to Back Global AI Startups
Humain Ventures, the fund's investment arm, plans to begin deploying capital into AI startups across the United States, Europe, and Asia starting this summer, according to the Financial Times. Leadership is in active discussions on equity stakes and technology arrangements with OpenAI, xAI (Elon Musk's AI company), Nvidia, AMD, and Qualcomm.
The scale of ambition is striking. Humain is targeting 6.6 gigawatts of AI data centre capacity by 2034 — enough to handle an estimated 7% of global AI workloads by 2030. The initial phase centres on a 50MW facility outfitted with 18,000 Nvidia GPUs, with subsequent phases requiring up to 180,000 chips in total.
"The first one to reach the top will own a big part of the market," said Tareq Amin, Humain's CEO, emphasising the company's urgency.
Major Deals with AWS, AMD, and Qualcomm
Among the partnerships already in place:
- Amazon Web Services: A $5 billion AI collaboration that includes building an AI marketplace on AWS infrastructure for use by Saudi government entities. - AMD: A $10 billion joint venture focused on open AI infrastructure, with plans for 500MW of AI compute capacity deployed over five years. - Qualcomm: A $2 billion chip design partnership, with a dedicated design centre in Riyadh expected to employ 500 engineers.
These deals landed in the wake of US President Donald Trump's visit to Saudi Arabia, during which tech leaders including Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Elon Musk, and OpenAI's Sam Altman accompanied him.
Competitive Edge: Cheap Power and Political Backing
Analysts point to several structural advantages Saudi Arabia holds in the AI race: subsidised electricity costs, deep US government relationships, and direct political backing from the crown prince. Together these factors allow Humain to compete aggressively with established AI hubs in the US, Europe, and Asia.
The kingdom's bet is that by moving swiftly now — locking in chip supply chains, global partnerships, and data centre capacity — it can secure a dominant position in the AI infrastructure market before rivals consolidate their leads.
