Exclusive / Saudi set to announce slew of AI deals with US firms
Matthew Martin and Liz Hoffman
Nov 18, 2025, 11:23am EST
The Scoop
Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund-backed artificial intelligence company, Humain, is set to announce a slew of new deals with US firms tomorrow as the country looks to pour billions of dollars into a plan to become the world’s third-largest country for AI.
Humain is planning to announce multi-gigawatt data center buildouts in collaboration with companies including Amazon, AMD, xAI, and GlobalAI, according to people familiar with the matter. The deals are expected to follow from an agreement for the US to approve a large semiconductors sale to the country, the people said.
It’s unclear how many of the deals will be new and substantive, or indications of progress made on agreements announced during US President Donald Trump’s visit to Riyadh in May.
Humain chief executive Tareq Amin has previously said he expected to have access to US-made AI chips by the time Humain opens its first data centers in early 2026. Under the proposed terms of an agreement that could be announced tomorrow following meetings between Trump and Saudi de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, Riyadh could get access to a large volume of AI chips for some pre-approved uses, the people said. That would avoid the kingdom having to make repeated requests for chips exports, they said.
Saudi Arabia is pitching itself to US tech firms as a low-cost compute hub, with its ample land and cheap energy making it an attractive place for hyperscalers to build capacity. Amin’s goal is to make Saudi Arabia the third-largest AI infrastructure provider in the world, behind the US and China, he said at last month’s Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh.
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