Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced at the LEAP technology conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, its plans for the company’s first cloud infrastructure region in Saudi Arabia which is due to launch by December 2026. AWS also plans to expand its partnership with HUMAIN, an artificial intelligence company owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF).
The announcement was made on the sidelines of the LEAP technology conference that is underway in Riyadh. Readers would recall that the new cloud infrastructure region was first announced in March 2024, and represents a planned investment of more than US$ 5.3 billion (19.88 billion Saudi riyals) in cloud infrastructure.
The new AWS region aims to offer developers, startups and companies the ability to run applications and serve users from data centers in Saudi Arabia, in line with the Kingdom’s digital sovereignty requirements.
“Saudi Arabia is home to some of the most ambitious and inventive builders, from startups and enterprises reimagining industries to public sector organizations deploying AI at scale, and the new AWS Region in the country will help them to continue to innovate,” said Matt Garman, CEO of AWS. “The launch of our new Region and our partnership with HUMAIN will deliver the full-stack cloud and AI infrastructure to help power new industries, create jobs, and accelerate the goals of Vision 2030.”
As far as the partnership with HUMAIN is concerned, according to a press release, AWS and HUMAIN plan to make 50 MW of computing capacity available in Saudi Arabia’s first AI Zone by 2028. The infrastructure will include AWS Trainium chips and NVIDIA AI systems for AI training and inference workloads. Once launched, the Saudi region will bring AWS’s global infrastructure network to 40 regions worldwide.
Abdullah Alswaha, Minister of Communications and Information Technology, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, said, “Saudi Arabia is building the computing power needed for the Intelligence Age and strengthening its position as a global computing partner. The launch of AWS’s new Region and its expanded partnership with HUMAIN will help accelerate AI innovation, enable new industries, and advance the goals of Saudi Vision 2030.”
HUMAIN’s ALLAM Arabic large language model is expected to become available through Amazon Bedrock, AWS’s managed generative AI platform. HUMAIN Fabric, an AI data infrastructure and platform component of its HUMAIN ONE generative AI operating system, will also be offered through AWS Marketplace.
According to an IDC report commissioned by AWS, AI will contribute an estimated $130 billion to Saudi Arabia’s economy by 2030.