AWS to launch first cloud infrastructure region in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia by December 2026

Amazon Web Services (AWS) will launch its first cloud infrastructure Region in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia by December 2026 and, in an expanded collaboration with HUMAIN, has committed to make up to 50 megawatts (MW) of capacity available in Saudi Arabia’s first AI Zone by 2028. The agreement will bring AWS Trainium chips and the latest NVIDIA AI infrastructure to support AI training and inference workloads, and represents a planned cloud infrastructure investment of more than $5.3 billion (19.88 billion Saudi riyal).

“Saudi Arabia is home to some of the most ambitious and inventive builders, from startups and enterprises reimagining industries to public sector organizations deploying AI at scale, and the new AWS Region in the country will help them to continue to innovate,” said Matt Garman, CEO of AWS.

The new Region, first announced in March 2024, will expand AWS’s global infrastructure footprint to 40 Regions worldwide. AWS is designating HUMAIN, a company owned by the Public Investment Fund, as its preferred AI partner in the Kingdom. As part of the expanded strategic collaboration, HUMAIN’s ALLAM Arabic large language model will be made available through Amazon Bedrock, and HUMAIN Fabric — the AI-native data infrastructure component of the HUMAIN ONE generative AI operating system — will be offered via AWS Marketplace.

HUMAIN’s AI Zone commitment of up to 50MW is positioned to accelerate AI adoption by providing local access to high-performance training and inference hardware. The announcement highlighted the inclusion of AWS Trainium processors and NVIDIA AI stacks to give customers options for running demanding machine learning workloads domestically.

His Excellency Engineer Abdullah Alswaha, Minister of Communications and Information Technology for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, said: “Saudi Arabia is building the computing power needed for the Intelligence Age and strengthening its position as a global computing partner. The launch of AWS’s new Region and its expanded partnership with HUMAIN will help accelerate AI innovation, enable new industries, and advance the goals of Saudi Vision 2030.”

Context and local uptake:

• An IDC report commissioned by AWS estimates AI will contribute an estimated $130 billion to Saudi Arabia’s economy by 2030, a potential the new Region aims to help realize by improving cost-efficiency and access to services such as Amazon Bedrock.
• Several Saudi organizations and partners are cited as early customers or collaborators, including Abdul Latif Jameel, Almosafer, stc Group, Red Bull Mobile, and AWS Partners ZainTECH, Accenture, and Tamkeen.
• stc Group has announced a strategic collaboration with AWS to accelerate cloud and AI adoption in Saudi Arabia, while ZainTECH signed a multiyear agreement to support organizations adopting AWS solutions and strengthening security and compliance readiness.

Workforce and ecosystem investments were emphasized alongside infrastructure. The Amazon Academy, launched with the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, aims to provide free training in cloud computing, AI, logistics, and retail to over 100,000 Saudi citizens. AWS also reported partnerships with 11 higher education institutions, a program to train up to 10,000 women through the AWS Saudi Arabia Women’s Skills Initiative at no charge, and a regional commitment to reach two million citizens with AI and cloud training by 2030 — having already served more than 680,000 individuals to date. AWS will also establish two innovation centers in Saudi Arabia to mentor startups and entrepreneurs.

Outlook: The combination of a local AWS Region, dedicated AI Zone capacity, and partnerships with HUMAIN and major local operators positions Saudi Arabia to host increasingly sophisticated AI workloads locally. The immediate priorities will be enabling enterprise migrations, providing access to high-performance AI compute, and scaling talent programs to ensure organizations can exploit the new infrastructure. With the Region due in December 2026 and AI Zone capacity rolling out by 2028, the next three years will test how swiftly public and private sectors translate these investments into deployed AI services and measurable economic impact.