The Desert’s Digital Dream: Inside Saudi Arabia’s $1 Trillion Bet on AI
In the heart of Riyadh, where the desert sun meets gleaming skyscrapers, a quiet revolution is taking shape. It is a revolution not of oil, but of data. Saudi Arabia, long known as the world’s energy powerhouse, is now making a massive, multi-billion dollar wager to become a global leader in a new resource: Artificial Intelligence.
The kingdom is turning its vast oil wealth toward an ambitious technological future. At the center of this plan is a homegrown company called Humain, a name that sounds like “human” but stands for something far grander. Owned by Saudi Arabia’s nearly $1 trillion sovereign wealth fund, Humain isn’t just another tech startup. It is the Kingdom’s chief investment vehicle, building everything from massive data centers and cloud computing systems to its own AI models and applications.
This is Saudi Arabia’s answer to a world increasingly powered by algorithms. And they are not thinking small.
From Oil Wells to AI Models
The project was unveiled in May by Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, signaling its supreme importance to the nation’s future. But at this week’s annual Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh often called “Davos in the Desert” the full scale of the ambition became clear.
The man tasked with this monumental mission is Humain’s CEO, Tareq Amin. In a conversation with CNN’s Becky Anderson, he laid out a stunning goal: to make Saudi Arabia the world’s third-largest AI market, trailing only the United States and China.
For a newcomer to the industry, this is a bold claim. But Amin argues the Kingdom holds a secret weapon, one buried not in its deserts but in its power grid: cheap and abundant energy.
“The biggest challenge for AI today is the immense computing power it requires, which consumes electricity at a staggering rate,” Amin explained. “We have an advantage in Saudi Arabia. Look at this country’s amazing energy grid. That means I have saved 18 months of time.”
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Building the AI Engine of the Future
That time savings is critical. Humain is moving at a blistering pace. The company plans to build up to six gigawatts of data center capability across the country by 2034. To understand that scale, six gigawatts is enough energy to power millions of homes.
They are not building alone. Humain has assembled a “rolodex of key AI partners,” a who’s who of tech giants including Nvidia, AMD, Amazon Web Services, Qualcomm, and Cisco. This week, they announced a massive $3 billion deal with private equity giant Blackstone to accelerate the construction of these data centers.
But hardware is only half the story. The company also publicly launched “Humain One,” an AI-powered operating system that could change how we interact with computers. Instead of clicking on icons, users simply speak or type what they want the computer to do.
The system is already at work inside Humain itself. Amin revealed that AI agents now handle most of the company’s HR, finance, legal, and IT departments. His payroll department, he says, now has just one human employee.
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A Regional Race and a National Imperative
Saudi Arabia’s push comes at a crucial time. The Kingdom is now moving into the final phase of its ambitious “Vision 2030” economic transformation plan. This ambitious blueprint, designed to wean the nation off oil, has faced headwinds from fluctuating oil prices and delays in other giant projects.
This places a new urgency on the AI push to support the growth of the Arab world’s largest economy.
Adding to the pressure is competition from its neighbor, the United Arab Emirates. The UAE has its own artificial intelligence powerhouse, G42, which recently struck a groundbreaking agreement to develop “Stargate UAE” a massive $500 billion data center project touted as the largest of its kind outside the United States, with help from OpenAI, Oracle, Nvidia, and Cisco.
When asked if there is room for two regional heavyweights, Amin struck a diplomatic but confident tone.
“It is good for humanity to have knowledge especially around AI not to be all centralized in one location,” he said. “So it’s good what is happening in the UAE. It’s very good what’s happening in Saudi Arabia.”
Then, he drew a line in the sand. “I will tell you what we decided to do, which is very different. Humain is not a holding company. We are an operating company.”
It is a declaration of intent. Saudi Arabia is not just investing in AI; it is building, operating, and betting its future on it. In the vast deserts that have fueled the world for decades, a new kind of power is being born.
Author: Yasir Khan
Date: 02 Nov, 2025
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