HUMAIN, Saudi Arabia’s new AI start-up backed by the Public Investment Fund (PIF), will launch a $10 billion venture capital fund as part of the kingdom's efforts to become a global AI leader, the company’s CEO, Tareq Amin, told the Financial Times (FT) on Wednesday.
Amin said HUMAIN will launch its fund this summer and will focus on investing in start-ups in the US, Europe and Asia.
HUMAIN is now looking for a US tech company to become an equity partner in its data center business, he said, adding that the company was in talks with OpenAI, venture capital firm Andreesen Horowitz and Elon Musk’s xAI.
Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Saudi Crown Prince and Prime Minister, launched HUMAIN one day prior to US President Donald Trump’s recent state visit to Riyadh. The President was accompanied by top executives including Elon Musk, OpenAI CEO Sam Altmer and Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang.
HUMAIN has already struck deals with Nvidia, AMD, Amazon Web Services and Qualcomm worth $23 billion, according to Amin.
He said the company aims to have 1.9GW of data center capacity by 2030, increasing to 6.6GW by 2034. The project’s cost is estimated at $77 billion.
“The plan is to process 7% of global AI training and inferencing by 2030,” the FT quoted Amin as saying.
Initial plans include a 50MW data center using 18,000 Nvidia GPUs, with expansion to 500MW requiring approximately 180,000 chips.
HUMAIN has also partnered with AMD on a $10 billion joint venture to provide 500MW of capacity over five years.
It is investing $2 billion with Qualcomm to co-develop chip design and data center capabilities. Under the deal, Qualcomm will establish a chip design center in Riyadh employing 500 engineers.
Amin said that within 30 days, HUMAIN will begin the procurement process for chips from US companies.
The CEO is hopeful that the sales will be supported by the Trump administration.
