AWS, HUMAIN to invest $5bn in groundbreaking AI Zone
Amazon Web Services, an Amazon.com company, and HUMAIN, Saudi Arabia's newly created company responsible for driving AI innovation across the kingdom and globally, have announced plans to invest $5 billion-plus in a strategic partnership to build a groundbreaking 'AI Zone' in the kingdom.
This first-of-a-kind AI Zone will bring together multiple innovative capabilities, including dedicated AWS AI infrastructure and servers with world-class semiconductors, UltraCluster networks for faster AI training and inference, AWS services like Sagemaker and Bedrock, and AI application services such as Amazon Q to advance Saudi Arabia's mission to be a world leader in AI.
AWS previously announced and is currently building an AWS infrastructure region in Saudi Arabia that will become available in 2026. Amazon is investing $5.3 billion in Saudi Arabia to develop this new region for AWS.
The new AI Zone announced on Tuesday is an additional investment to grow global and local demand for advanced AI services in the kingdom, and is part of AWS's long-term commitment to bring its world-class infrastructure and services to Saudi Arabia.
This collaboration aligns with Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 and builds upon the kingdom's pledge in 2024 to invest in building an AI-powered economy, representing a significant step towards realizing Saudi Arabia's ambitions to become a global AI leader.
AWS will bring to Saudi Arabia its advanced server and network infrastructure capabilities, as well as its artificial intelligence and machine learning services – including Amazon Sagemaker AI, Amazon Bedrock and Amazon Q, fully managed services for building and scaling generative AI (genAI) applications. With Amazon Bedrock in Saudi Arabia, businesses and government organizations can access high-performing models from leading AI companies to develop genAI applications with security, privacy, and responsible AI. Amazon Q is the world's most capable coding assistant, and also enables organizations to build genAI-powered assistants to answer questions, provide summaries, generate content, and complete tasks based on enterprise data.
Through this collaboration, HUMAIN plans to develop AI solutions using AWS technologies for its end customers. Further, HUMAIN will work with AWS on the development of a unified AI agent marketplace, simplifying the discovery, deployment, and management of AI software for the Saudi Arabia government. The collaboration also intends to spur the growth of Large Language Models (LLMs), including Arabic Large Language Models (ALLaM), while spearheading wide adoption of AI in organizations and industries across the Gulf Region and beyond.
Key sectors, such as government, energy, healthcare, and education, will be able to accelerate their transformation, envisioning AI-powered tools that can personalise learning experiences for students, help provide early disease diagnoses for patients, and unleash productivity across core upstream and downstream processes for government administration. Use cases such as these will be accelerated via the AWS Generative AI Innovation Center, in partnership with HUMAIN, enabling customers – from the fastest-growing startups and largest enterprises, to government agencies – to amplify genAI roadmaps and workloads, leading to equitable and efficient delivery of vital services for greater societal impact.
'We thank AWS for doubling down on their long-term partnership with the Kingdom. This new collaboration with HUMAIN lays the foundation for the intelligent era, accelerates our innovation momentum, grows our talent, and reinforces Saudi Arabia's position as a global partner of choice in the age of AI,' said Eng Abdullah Alswaha, Minister of Communications and Information Technology.
Fueling vibrant startup sector
AWS and HUMAIN will also work together to advance an AI-powered startup sector in the kingdom, providing access to the broadest and deepest set of cloud technology tools and programs, including AWS Activate, and helping Saudi Arabia's most ambitious founders and entrepreneurs scale their businesses.
AWS has helped more than 330,000 startups globally bring their business ideas to life. Its scalable, secure, low-cost cloud solutions and AI-powered services, combined with HUMAIN's deep support network, will help supercharge Saudi's startup scene. According to MAGNiTT, Saudi Arabia startups secured $750 million venture capital funding in 2024, the highest share of capital deployed across the Middle East and North Africa last year.
'This collaboration to build an AI Zone in Saudi Arabia will enable innovations across all industries using AWS's advanced AI offerings, and reflects our commitment to support Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030,' said Matt Garman, CEO, Amazon Web Services. 'Together, we will empower customers with cost-effective and secure cloud technologies, fuel innovation and economic growth across the nation, and enable HUMAIN to appeal to customers globally.'
Accelerating talent development
As part of its long-term commitment to fast-track cloud adoption in Saudi Arabia, AWS is scaling its training and certification programs focused on genAI skills-building in line with the Kingdom's Vision 2030 digital transformation goals. Working with Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF), AWS has committed to train 100,000 citizens from the Kingdom in cloud computing and genAI, focusing on the two newest AWS genAI certifications: AWS AI Practitioner and AWS Machine Learning Engineer Associate Certifications.
Training will be delivered by the Amazon Academy. Launched in 2023, the Amazon Academy is the largest talent development program of its kind in the Middle East. It provides transformative training and certifications, free of cost to participants, to elevate in-demand competencies and equip Saudi talent for jobs of the future. The program is designed to empower the next generation of Saudi youth, entrepreneurs, and professionals at any stage of their career to achieve success across in-demand skills, such as cloud computing, logistics, and leadership.
In addition, to help accelerate Saudi Arabia's goal of empowering women to increase participation in the workforce, AWS in 2024 also launched an upskilling program, 'AWS Saudi Arabia Women's Skills Initiative,' in partnership with Skillsoft Global Knowledge. AWS has committed to train 10,000 women on AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials, at no charge, through classroom trainings with AWS-certified professionals.
Supercharging HUMAIN's AI ambitions
Saudi Arabia is forecast to hold the lion's share of AI's estimated economic impact across the Middle East in the coming years. According to PwC, AI will contribute $130 billion to Saudi's economy by 2030, comprising more than 40 percent of the estimated $320 billion of AI value for the entire Middle East.
The kingdom is also at the forefront of a regional drive to transform both public sector services and enterprises with AI-powered innovation built in the cloud. PwC estimates that nearly 70 percent of Middle East companies plan to migrate most of their operations to the cloud within the next year, while a 2023 report by Telecom Advisory Services predicts public cloud adoption to unlock US$733 billion in economic value by 2033 across the Middle East and North Africa.
"HUMAIN's partnership with AWS is a pivotal moment in Saudi Arabia's journey to become a global leader in AI,' said Tareq Amin, CEO of HUMAIN. 'By leveraging AWS's world-class cloud infrastructure and AI expertise and HUMAIN's full-stack AI capabilities, we are creating an offering that will attract global investment and talent, thereby driving our digital transformation agenda forward.' -
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