Saudi Arabia's HUMAIN and AWS forge $5bn-plus AI Zone partnership
Amazon Web Services (AWS) and HUMAIN, Saudi Arabia's newly created company responsible for driving AI innovation across the country and globally, 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, which will bring together multiple innovative capabilities, including dedicated AWS AI infrastructure and servers with world-class semiconductors and UltraCluster networks for faster AI training and inference, is aimed to advance Saudi Arabia's mission to be a world leader in AI.
AWS services like SageMaker and Bedrock and AI application services such as Amazon Q will also be part of the proposed AI Zone.
HUMAIN, AWS join forces
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 Arabian 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 organisations and industries across the Gulf Region and beyond.
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 programmes, including AWS Activate, and helping Saudi Arabia's most ambitious founders and entrepreneurs scale their businesses.
'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 Abdullah Alswaha, Minister of Communications and Information Technology.
Tareq Amin, CEO of HUMAIN, said the company's partnership with AWS is a pivotal moment in Saudi Arabia's journey to become a global leader in AI.
'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,' he said.
The collaboration is expected to benefit key sectors such as government, energy, healthcare, and education to accelerate their transformation.
Envisioning AI-powered tools 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, Amazon said.
Use cases such as these will be accelerated via the AWS Generative AI Innovation Centre, 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, it said.
The latest collaboration follows AWS previously announced and is currently building an AWS infrastructure region in Saudi Arabia, which is scheduled to become operational in 2026.
Amazon is investing $5.3 billion (approx. SAR 19.88 billion) in Saudi Arabia to develop this new region for AWS.
The new AI Zone 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, Amazon said.
The 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 realising its ambitions to become a global AI leader.
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