THE CRUNCH
Saudi Aramco is taking a 49 percent stake in Humain, the Saudi AI company founded in May 2025 by the sovereign wealth fund PIF, and will contribute about $2.6 billion in 2026 along with its own AI technology. Humain builds data centres, develops cloud services and trains AI models, including the Arabic language model ALLaM. The company plans three gigawatts of data centre capacity by 2030 and aims to serve demand at home and abroad as a leading AI exporter.
Aramco plans to use the technology in its own operations and sell its AI solutions for extra revenue. Through its investment arm Wa'ed Ventures, it also holds a stake in Korean AI chip developer Rebellions.
There are early signs of traction, at least by AMD's account: in late August, AMD said infrastructure built jointly with Cisco and Humain is already serving customers inside and outside Saudi Arabia.
The regional conflict with Iran is weighing on the buildout. CEO Tareq Amin told Semafor in September that Humain is strengthening protection for its data centres, drawing on Aramco's experience securing oil infrastructure as a model. Despite the war, he said Humain has seen no drop in demand.