AWS and HUMAIN, Saudi Arabia’s newly created company responsible for driving AI innovation across Saudi Arabia and globally, announced plans to invest $5 billion-plus in a strategic partnership to build a groundbreaking AI Zone in Saudi Arabia. This first-of-a-kind AI Zone will bring together multiple innovative capabilities, including dedicated AWS AI infrastructure and servers with world-class semiconductors, UltraCluster networks for faster AI training and inference, AWS services like Sagemaker and Bedrock, and AI application services such as Amazon Q to advance Saudi Arabia’s mission to be a world provider in AI.
AWS previously announced and is currently building an AWS infrastructure region in Saudi Arabia that will become available in 2026. Amazon is investing US$5.3 billion, approx. 19.88 billion Saudi riyal in Saudi Arabia to develop this new region for AWS.
The new AI Zone announced is an additional investment to grow global and local demand for advanced AI services in Saudi Arabia, and is part of AWS’s long-term commitment to bring its world-class infrastructure and services to Saudi Arabia.
This collaboration aligns with Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 and builds upon Saudi Arabia’s pledge in 2024 to invest in building an AI-powered economy, representing a significant step towards realising Saudi Arabia’s ambitions to become a global AI provider. AWS will bring to Saudi Arabia its advanced server and network infrastructure capabilities, as well as its Artificial Intelligence and machine learning services – including Amazon Sagemaker AI, Amazon Bedrock and Amazon Q, fully managed services for building and scaling Generative AI applications.
With Amazon Bedrock in Saudi Arabia, businesses and government organisations can access high-performing models from AI companies to develop genAI applications with security, privacy, and responsible AI. Amazon Q is the world’s most capable coding assistant, and also enables organisations to build genAI-powered assistants to answer questions, provide summaries, generate content, and complete tasks based on enterprise data.
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 Saudi Arabia 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.
Key sectors, such as government, energy, healthcare, and education, will be able to accelerate their transformation, envisioning AI-powered tools that 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.
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, to equitable and efficient delivery of vital services for greater societal impact.
“We thank AWS for doubling down on their long-term partnership with Saudi Arabia. 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 His Excellency Eng Abdullah Alswaha, Minister of Communications and Information Technology.
“HUMAIN’s partnership with AWS is a pivotal moment in Saudi Arabia’s journey to become a global provider in AI,” said Tareq Amin, CEO of HUMAIN. “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.”
“This collaboration to build an AI Zone in Saudi Arabia will enable innovations across all industries using AWS’s advanced AI offerings, and reflects our commitment to support Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030,” said Matt Garman, CEO, Amazon Web Services.
AWS and HUMAIN will also work together to advance an AI-powered startup sector in Saudi Arabia, 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.
AWS has helped more than 330,000 startups globally bring their business ideas to life. Its scalable, secure, low-cost cloud solutions and AI-powered services, combined with HUMAIN’s deep support network, will help supercharge Saudi’s startup scene. According to MAGNiTT, Saudi Arabia startups secured US$750 million venture capital funding in 2024, the highest share of capital deployed across the Middle East and North Africa last year.
As part of its long-term commitment to fast-track cloud adoption in Saudi Arabia, AWS is scaling its training and certification programmes focused on genAI skills-building in line with Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 digital transformation goals. Working with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, PIF, AWS has committed to train 100,000 citizens from Saudi Arabia in cloud computing and genAI, focusing on the two newest AWS genAI certifications: AWS AI Practitioner and AWS Machine Learning Engineer Associate Certifications. Training will be delivered by the Amazon Academy.
Launched in 2023, the Amazon Academy is the largest talent development programme of its kind in the Middle East. It provides transformative training and certifications, free of cost to participants, to elevate in-demand competencies and equip Saudi talent for jobs of the future. The programme is designed to empower the next generation of Saudi youth, entrepreneurs, and professionals at any stage of their career to achieve success across in-demand skills, such as cloud computing, logistics, and leadership.
In addition, to help accelerate Saudi Arabia’s goal of empowering women to increase participation in the workforce, AWS in 2024 also launched an upskilling programme, AWS Saudi Arabia Women’s Skills Initiative, in partnership with Skillsoft Global Knowledge. AWS has committed to train 10,000 women on AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials, at no charge, through classroom trainings with AWS-certified professionals.
Saudi Arabia is forecast to hold the lion’s share of AI’s estimated economic impact across the Middle East in the coming years. According to PwC, AI will contribute $130 billion to Saudi’s economy by 2030, comprising more than 40% of the estimated $320 billion of AI value for the entire Middle East.
Saudi Arabia is also at the forefront of a regional drive to transform both public sector services and enterprises with AI-powered innovation built in the cloud. PwC estimates that nearly 70% of Middle East companies plan to migrate most of their operations to the cloud within the next year, while a 2023 report by Telecom Advisory Services predicts public cloud adoption to unlock US$733 billion in economic value by 2033 across the Middle East and North Africa.
