Amazon Web Services (AWS) and HUMAIN, Saudi Arabia’s newly formed national AI company, have announced a strategic partnership to build an “AI Zone” in the Kingdom, backed by an investment exceeding $5 billion. The initiative aims to accelerate the country’s AI ambitions and support its Vision 2030 objectives by providing advanced infrastructure, tools, and talent development to enable widespread adoption of artificial intelligence.
The AI Zone will be the first of its kind in the region and is designed to serve as a central hub for AI innovation. It will include dedicated AWS infrastructure with advanced semiconductors, high-speed networking via UltraClusters, and a full suite of services such as Amazon Sagemaker, Amazon Bedrock, and Amazon Q. The infrastructure is expected to support the development and scaling of generative AI applications across sectors.
This announcement builds on AWS’s existing plans to establish a new AWS Region in Saudi Arabia, which is scheduled to launch in 2026. AWS is investing $5.3 billion (SAR 19.88 billion) into this regional development. The new AI Zone represents a separate and additional investment focused on meeting local and global demand for advanced AI capabilities.
“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.
According to the announcement, the AI Zone will also support the development of a unified AI agent marketplace to facilitate the discovery and deployment of AI tools across Saudi government entities. HUMAIN will use AWS technologies to build AI solutions for end customers and collaborate on initiatives to encourage the growth of Large Language Models (LLMs), including models tailored to Arabic language and regional use cases.
Several sectors, including government, energy, healthcare, and education, are expected to benefit from the initiative. Use cases mentioned include AI-powered educational tools, early diagnosis systems in healthcare, and improved productivity in public sector workflows. The AWS Generative AI Innovation Center, launched in partnership with HUMAIN, will support startups, enterprises, and government agencies in developing and scaling such applications.
“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 of Amazon Web Services. “Together, we will empower customers with cost-effective and secure cloud technologies, fuel innovation and economic growth across the nation, and enable HUMAIN to appeal to customers globally.”
AWS and HUMAIN also plan to invest in talent development and digital upskilling. AWS has committed to training 100,000 Saudi citizens in cloud and generative AI technologies, in partnership with the Public Investment Fund. The program will be delivered through the Amazon Academy, which offers training in areas such as cloud computing, logistics, and leadership, and provides certifications at no cost to participants.
The training focus includes two new AWS certifications—AI Practitioner and Machine Learning Engineer Associate—designed to equip participants with relevant skills in generative AI and machine learning.
To support the Kingdom’s goal of increasing female participation in the workforce, AWS has also launched the “AWS Saudi Arabia Women’s Skills Initiative” in collaboration with Skillsoft Global Knowledge. The initiative aims to train 10,000 women in foundational cloud skills through instructor-led sessions.
Beyond infrastructure and talent, the collaboration also includes support for Saudi Arabia’s startup ecosystem. AWS and HUMAIN will provide cloud and AI resources, as well as access to programs like AWS Activate, to help entrepreneurs scale their businesses. In 2024, Saudi startups raised $750 million in venture capital funding, the largest share in the MENA region, according to MAGNiTT.
“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,” said Tareq Amin, CEO of HUMAIN.
The announcement comes as Saudi Arabia continues to ramp up its investments in AI infrastructure, research, and application across the economy. PwC estimates that AI will contribute $130 billion to Saudi Arabia’s economy by 2030, representing more than 40 percent of the total projected AI impact across the Middle East.
A 2023 report by Telecom Advisory Services also projected that public cloud adoption could unlock $733 billion in economic value by 2033 across the MENA region, as more enterprises move core operations to the cloud. PwC forecasts that nearly 70 percent of Middle East companies plan to migrate most of their operations to the cloud within the next year.
The AWS-HUMAIN partnership positions Saudi Arabia to take advantage of these trends by offering local access to advanced cloud infrastructure and AI services, supported by workforce development and startup enablement programmes.
The AI Zone initiative is expected to play a central role in Saudi Arabia’s broader AI strategy, serving as a foundational step in its journey to become a regional and global leader in artificial intelligence.
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