Humain’s Billion-Dollar Data Bet: Will Saudi AI Firm See a Return?

Riyadh is betting big on data, envisioning it as the Kingdom’s next lucrative commodity—a vision spearheaded by artificial intelligence and data center firm, Humain.

Backed by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund (PIF), Humain aims to leverage the country’s vast land reserves and plentiful energy resources to establish a massive data center footprint.

As the Kingdom grapples with fluctuating oil prices and escalating costs associated with ambitious megaprojects like Neom, the expectation is that a surge in demand for data and high-performance computing will transform these facilities into a reliable revenue stream for decades to come.

“Our ambition is very clear,” Tareq Amin, CEO of Humain, told CNBC’s Access Middle East. “We want to position ourselves as the third-largest AI provider globally, trailing only the United States and China.”

Humain, launched just a day before U.S. President Donald Trump’s visit to the Kingdom in May of this year, is structured to provide a full suite of AI capabilities. This includes data centers, infrastructure, cloud platforms, and cutting-edge AI models, all with the ambition of cementing Saudi Arabia’s position as the preeminent AI hub in the region.

However, Saudi Arabia faces a formidable challenge from the United Arab Emirates, which is rapidly advancing its AI ambitions through significant partnerships with U.S. tech giants. Projects like the Stargate Campus in Abu Dhabi reflect this intense competition.

While projections forecast the Saudi Arabian data center market will expand from $1.33 billion in 2024 to $3.9 billion by 2030, it remains significantly smaller than the U.S. market, which is presently valued at over $200 billion.

Significant hurdles remain. Questions persist regarding the economic feasibility and environmental consequences of operating and cooling extensive data centers in the arid Middle Eastern climate. The challenge of attracting and retaining top-tier AI engineers to live and work in Saudi Arabia is also a key consideration.

Access to skilled talent is a critical bottleneck. Currently, Saudi Arabia relies heavily on expatriate professionals, often requiring premium compensation packages. Moreover, retaining this talent for sustained periods remains an ongoing concern.

Attracting and keeping talented AI engineers is anticipated to be a considerable challenge, regardless of competitive salaries. The numbers corroborate: AI-related positions in Saudi Arabia are proving difficult to fill, reflecting a talent gap of around 50%, according to Minister of Human Resources and Social Development Ahmed Al-Rajhi.

Baghdad Gherras, a UAE-based venture partner at Antler, suggests that Saudi Arabia may “struggle” to compete with the UAE’s more consistent approach to investment attraction and government strategy implementation. He contends that the vision is “extremely concentrated at the top,” creating a “lag” in middle management and on-the-ground execution.

While Humain keeps specific investment figures under wraps, the company has announced strategic technology partnerships totaling $23 billion, alongside a $10 billion venture fund. The PIF, its parent, manages nearly $1 trillion in assets allocated across diverse sectors and geographies.

“All my investments are strategic,” Amin emphasizes. “Any startup addressing the critical need for joint IP creation, localization, and workload consumptions within Saudi Arabia is where we’re directing our capital.” This includes substantial investments in infrastructure, such as Groq, and other companies within the application layers.

In February, California-based AI company Groq secured a $1.5 billion commitment from Saudi Arabia to scale up its chip delivery capabilities. Prior to that, in December, Groq established what it stated was the region’s largest AI inference cluster within the Kingdom.

“GroqCloud services are now available to nearly four billion people regionally adjacent to the KSA,” the company stated earlier this year. “This deployment of Groq AI inference infrastructure is now enabling service to the EMEA and South Asia markets in ways unseen before.”

Humain is also partnering with chipmaking giants AMD and Nvidia to secure the necessary hardware to fuel its ambitious data center build-out.

Construction has commenced on two large campuses in the Kingdom, encompassing 11 data centers. Each boasts a 200-megawatt capacity. Humain is targeting 50 megawatts of built capacity by Q4 2025, followed by successive 50-megawatt additions each quarter into 2026.

The ultimate objective is to install 1.9 gigawatts by 2030 and scale up to six gigawatts by 2034, positioning Saudi Arabia as a major player in the global AI landscape.