HUMAIN: Saudi Arabia’s bold bet on sovereign AI and Arabic LLMs

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has launched HUMAIN, aimed at positioning the kingdom as a global AI hub.

HUMAIN, a new AI company under the Public Investment Fund (PIF) — a sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia — will develop advanced AI technologies, next-generation data centers, cloud infrastructure, and one of the world’s most powerful multimodal Arabic large language models (LLMs), according to an official press statement.

Led by the Crown Prince, HUMAIN will span the entire AI value chain, innovative services and products for critical sectors, including energy, healthcare, manufacturing, and financial services. By optimizing data center projects, securing state-of-the-art hardware, and nurturing local innovation, HUMAIN aims to fast-track AI adoption across regional and global markets.

“Saudi Arabia is making massive investments in the AI space, both via public and private sector initiatives, as it looks to diversify its economy,” said Marc Einstein, research director at Counterpoint Research. “Focusing on Arabic language LLMs, which can be exported, is certainly a step in the right direction towards building a strong local ecosystem,” he added.

The emphasis on local LLMs and a sovereign AI infrastructure marks a bold shift in a sector dominated by Western and Chinese entities. “Beyond language, it’s about cultural context, regional control, and data sovereignty, setting a precedent for emerging markets to build locally grounded AI systems,” said Prabhat Mishra, Analyst at QKS Group.

According to Manish Ranjan, research director for Software & Cloud at IDC EMEA, this launch marks a key step in Saudi Arabia’s ambition to cultivate a robust sovereign AI ecosystem, building on the Middle East’s demonstrated leadership in AI and GenAI innovation, as seen in the UAE’s National AI Strategy (2017) and prominent regional LLMs like Falcon (TII) and Jais (G42 and MBZUAI).

Bolstered by its strategic location, dynamic economic growth, and tech-savvy population, Saudi Arabia ranks as the global leader in government AI strategy, per the 2024 Global AI Index, providing a solid foundation for HUMAIN’s ambitious goals, as per the release.

Saudi Arabia’s global AI aspirations

HUMAIN’s launch gains further significance as it coincides with a high-profile Saudi-US investment forum in Riyadh on Tuesday. US President Donald Trump and top tech executives from Alphabet, IBM, and Qualcomm are attending, with AI expected to dominate discussions. Adding to the optimistic outlook, a Bloomberg report suggests the Trump administration intends to ease restrictions on AI chip exports to Saudi Arabia and its allies, a move poised to significantly boost the kingdom’s tech ambitions.

This development aligns with “Saudi Arabia’s aggressive expansion of its AI and data center infrastructure under Vision 2030,” with the Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority (SDAIA) playing a key role in driving these initiatives, according to Ranjan. The kingdom currently accounts for nearly half of the data center capacity in the Middle East and North Africa, with over two gigawatts in development.

Analyst firm Research and Markets projects a significant $12 billion in new data center investments in the region by 2027. Ranjan further pointed out that “running language models requires significant compute power and data.” He highlighted that Saudi Arabia’s strict data regulations, which mandate data to stay within the country, create challenges for relying solely on external cloud infrastructure for inferencing LLMs in regulated industries.

The launch aligns with growing interest from US tech giants in the Gulf, drawn by cheap energy and land. Companies like Salesforce, which is planning a $500 million AI investment in Saudi Arabia, and Scale AI, backed by Amazon, are establishing a local presence. The PIF, managing $940 billion in assets and projected to reach $2 trillion by 2030, according to monitoring organization Global SWF, has become a key partner for firms like Google in AI-related ventures. This robust financial backing, coupled with national alignment, creates a strong foundation for sovereign AI innovation, according to Mishra.