Saudi Arabia’s National Infrastructure Fund (Infra) and HUMAIN, an artificial intelligence company owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), have signed two financing agreements totaling up to SAR 2.5 billion (~ US$ 667 million) to support AI computing deployment, as well as the development of critical power infrastructure in Saudi Arabia.
The facilities are the first transactions announced under Infra’s AI Data Center Financing Program. Readers would recall that in January this year, on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, Infra and HUMAIN had announced a Strategic Financing Framework Agreement of up to US$ 1.2 billion for developing AI and digital infrastructure projects across the Kingdom. The latest financing agreements build on that.
“Through these agreements, we aim to unlock investment well beyond Infra’s own commitment. Supporting HUMAIN’s computing deployment alongside essential power infrastructure helps prepare a broader pipeline of data center projects for investment,” Eng. Esmail bin Mohammed Alsallom, CEO, Infra, said in a press release.
Tareq Amin, CEO, HUMAIN, said, “AI infrastructure is becoming foundational to the next generation of computing, and scaling it requires both significant investment and the infrastructure to support it. These facilities with Infra will help accelerate the deployment of advanced computing capacity and the power infrastructure required to support it.”
HUMAIN further said that the GPU financing facility, of up to SAR 1.1 billion (US4 293.3 million), will support the procurement and deployment of graphics processing units (GPUs), representing approximately 25 MW of IT load. A second facility of up to SAR 1.4 billion (USD 373.3 million), will finance the development of substations, transmission infrastructure and grid connections to support HUMAIN’s AI data centers in Saudi Arabia.
The planned power infrastructure is designed to support future data center development with up to 1 GW of IT capacity, helping create the conditions for investment by developers, hyperscalers and institutional investors.
The agreements were signed in Riyadh in the presence of H.E. Yasir Al-Rumayyan, Governor of the Public Investment Fund, H.E. Faisal bin Fadhil Alibrahim, Minister of Economy and Planning and Chairman of Infra’s Board of Directors, and H.E. Abdulaziz Alarifi, Governor of the National Development Fund.