stc–HUMAIN AI Campus | High-Performance Compute & Digital Infrastructure Partnership

Status: Early Development / Partnership Finalized   |   Location: Multi-site (Riyadh, Jeddah, Dammam, NEOM), Saudi Arabia

Project Overview

The stc-HUMAIN project marks a monumental shift in the Middle East’s digital landscape, representing the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's most ambitious push toward Sovereign AI to date. This strategic joint venture (JV) is formed between center3 (the digital infrastructure subsidiary of stc group) and HUMAIN (a specialized AI company wholly owned by the Public Investment Fund - PIF). The collaboration is designed to build and operate a next-generation network of AI-native data centers with a long-term goal of reaching 1 Gigawatt (1 GW) of total IT workload capacity.

Announced as a cornerstone of the Saudi Vision 2030 digital economy framework, the first phase of this development focuses on establishing 250 MW of high-density capacity. Unlike traditional cloud facilities, these centers are "AI-first" by design. They are engineered to house massive clusters of the latest GPUs (such as NVIDIA’s Blackwell series) and custom AI accelerators required for training Large Language Models (LLMs), including the world's most advanced Arabic LLMs. The infrastructure is strategically distributed across multiple primary hubs—Riyadh, Jeddah, and NEOM—to ensure low-latency access and high availability for government, enterprise, and research sectors.

Sustainability and energy sovereignty are central to the project's MEP strategy. Despite the harsh desert climate, the campus targets a PUE of 1.20 by utilizing advanced liquid-to-chip cooling and geothermal heat exchange systems. This allows the facility to handle power densities exceeding 80kW per rack, which is nearly ten times the industry average for standard enterprise servers. By integrating with center3’s massive subsea cable network—which links 17+ landing stations across three continents—the stc-HUMAIN project will serve as a global bridge for AI traffic while ensuring that Saudi Arabia maintains absolute control over its national data and computational power.

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