How Saudi Arabia plans to become world’s no 3 AI power

Saudi Arabia is making a massive, multi-billion dollar bet on turning its wealth towards Artificial intelligence (AI) as an essential plan to diversify its economy.

The prime investment vehicle is Humain, a domestic company that is building out a data center infrastructure stack, cloud capabilities, and language model applications.

For that purpose, Humanin CEO, Tareq Amin is efficiently working to make the world’s third-largest AI market, after the United States and China.

It marks a bold step to compete in the global market, driven by the voracious demand for computing power.

Humain plans to build up to six gigawatts in data center capability across the country by 2034, with the contribution of key AI partners, including Nvidia, AMD, Amazon Web Services, Qualcomm, and Cisco. 

On the contrary, Humain announced a $3 billion deal with private equity giant Blackstone to build data centers in the kingdom.

Humain One, an AI-powered operating system has been publicly announced which allows users to speak or type to a computer to tell it to perform tasks, unlike in traditional systems like Windows or iOS.

Nonetheless, Saudi Arabia is marking its name on becoming a global AI powerhouse and is in direct competition with the neighboring United Arab Emirates. 

The UAE, through its AI conglomerate G42, recently secured a historic pact with the Trump administration to build the $500 billion data center project billed as the largest outside the United States.

The new move will underscore the boldness and urgency of the Kingdom's ambition to diversify its economy from oil by focusing on Artificial Intelligence.