Pranav Hotkar
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, 25 August 2025- The country's new artificial intelligence company, Humain, has begun building its first two data centers in Riyadh and Dammam, with operations scheduled to start in the second quarter of 2026.
Each facility will open with a capacity of up to 100 megawatts, powered by advanced U.S. semiconductors, including Nvidia’s latest Blackwell AI chips.
“Humain is in the process of procuring semiconductors for those data centers from U.S. chipmakers, including Nvidia Corp,” said Tareq Amin, CEO of Humain.
He added that the Saudi company has received local regulatory approval to import 18,000 Nvidia chips, with more purchases depending on U.S. export rules. The data centers are part of Humain’s broader goal to make Saudi Arabia a leader in AI and digital infrastructure.
He also noted, “It depends on the governance and the protocols and the approval of the U.S. government, and these are formalities that we are going to start going through very, very soon.”
Launched in May 2025 under the kingdom’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) and chaired by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Humain has announced partnerships with top U.S. tech firms. These include a $10 billion deal with AMD, collaborations with Qualcomm and Cisco, and talks with xAI for a potential data center project.
By 2030, Humain plans to expand its data center capacity to 1.9 gigawatts, with longer-term ambitions reaching 6.6 gigawatts by 2034. Alongside this, the company has set up a $10 billion venture capital fund to invest in AI startups across the U.S., Europe, and Asia.
These efforts directly support Vision 2030, Saudi Arabia’s plan to diversify its economy beyond oil and build a strong technology sector. Officials say the initiative could help the kingdom process up to 7% of the world’s AI workloads by 2030, establishing it as a major global hub for artificial intelligence.
