Saudi Arabia launches new AI firm ahead of Trump’s visit

Saudi Arabia has launched a new firm to invest across the artificial intelligence value chain, ahead of a visit by US President Donald Trump, where the technology is expected to feature prominently on the agenda.

HUMAIN, owned by the kingdom’s $925 billion Public Investment Fund, 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.

The firm will also serve as an AI hub for sectors such as energy, health care, manufacturing and financial services, the statement added, without disclosing the scale of planned investments. Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman will chair the new entity.

Saudi Arabia has been positioning itself as a global tech hub under its sweeping economic diversification plan. It has announced initiatives such as a $100 billion AI project and is rapidly expanding its data center and cloud infrastructure.

Those efforts are expected to get a boost during Trump’s visit to the Middle East. His administration is planning to rescind some Biden-era curbs that’d restricted access to cutting-edge AI chips for Saudi Arabia and regional peers like the United Arab Emirates, Bloomberg News has reported. 

AI is also expected to be a central theme at the Saudi-US Investment Forum on Tuesday, which will feature prominent tech executives including Alphabet Inc.’s Ruth Porat, IBM Corp.’s Arvind Krishna and Qualcomm Inc.’s Cristiano Amon.

US cloud-computing giants, or hyperscalers, have increasingly looked to the Gulf for expansion, drawn by the region’s cheap energy and land. In March, analyst firm Research and Markets forecast that $12 billion in new data center investment would flow into 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. A government minister recently said the country is building more than two gigawatts of computing capacity.

As part of that push, more companies are planning to establish a local presence — including Scale AI, a startup backed by Amazon.com Inc. Meanwhile, Salesforce Inc. is hiring in the kingdom as part of its planned $500 million investment.