How a PIF-backed “startup” is turning operating systems and infrastructure into Saudi Arabia’s next strategic export.
A New Kind of Operating System Out of Riyadh
On stage at the Fortune Global Forum in Riyadh, Humain CEO Tareq Amin described a future where you don’t click an icon to open an app — you just tell your computer what you want.
Humain, the Saudi AI company launched in May 2025 under the Public Investment Fund (PIF) and chaired by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, is preparing to roll out Humain One, a new AI-based operating system that replaces the familiar grid of icons with a conversational interface.
Instead of hunting through menus, users speak in natural language and the system interprets intent — scheduling meetings, pulling reports, or triggering workflows across applications. Humain has already been testing the OS internally on mundane but critical tasks like payroll and HR, an early sign it is being built first for enterprise-grade complexity rather than consumer gimmicks.
Humain positions this as more than a UX upgrade. If it works at scale, a voice-first system that spans productivity, back-office operations, and AI-native applications could challenge decades of muscle memory shaped by Windows and macOS.
From National Project to “Global AI Powerhouse”
Humain is not a typical early-stage startup. It was created by PIF as a full-stack AI company designed to operate across the entire AI value chain:
- Next-generation data centres
- AI infrastructure and cloud platforms
- Advanced AI models, including a flagship Arabic multimodal large language model
- Sector-specific AI solutions for government and industry
That mission is spelled out in official PIF and government communications, which describe Humain as a “global AI powerhouse” aimed at giving Saudi Arabia sovereign control over AI compute, platforms, and models.
The company aligns directly with the National Strategy for Data & AI and Vision 2030, which cast data and AI as core to economic diversification beyond oil.
Leading that charge is Tareq Amin, whose CV reads like a tour through telecom and digital infrastructure:
- Former CEO of Aramco Digital
- Earlier, founder and CEO of Rakuten Symphony, where he helped push open, cloud-native telco infrastructure
- Previously involved in Rakuten Mobile’s network build-out and automation platform
He now frames AI infrastructure as a question of national sovereignty: countries that don’t control compute, he argues, will be renting their AI future from someone else.
Six Gigawatts of Compute: Infrastructure as Industrial Policy
Alongside the Humain One announcement, Amin revealed that the company plans to build around 6 gigawatts of data centre capacity — without yet specifying locations.
To put that in context:
- A recent Saudi data centre strategy, led by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology and SDAIA, targets up to 1.5 GW of national data centre capacity by 2030.
- Humain’s 6 GW ambition — presumably across multiple sites and possibly geographies — suggests the company is thinking far beyond domestic needs and aiming at global-scale AI workloads.
This is infrastructure as industrial policy: compute as a new form of strategic capacity, akin to energy or shipping lanes. If even a portion of that 6 GW is realised, it would reshape the region’s data gravity, pulling AI training and inference workloads into Saudi-linked facilities.
Partnerships With the Chip Giants
To pull this off, Humain is locking in deep partnerships with leading chipmakers and platform companies.
- Nvidia is set to ship tens of thousands of advanced AI chips to Saudi Arabia to power a 500 MW AI data centre, one of the first large deployments of its Blackwell-generation hardware.
- AMD and Humain have announced plans to invest up to $10 billion to deploy another 500 MW of AI compute capacity over five years, spanning facilities from Saudi Arabia to the United States.
- Humain describes itself as building an “open by design” infrastructure, accessible to enterprises, startups and sovereign clients, rather than a closed, single-vendor stack.
On the platform side, Humain is already moving to plug itself into the global cloud and AI ecosystem:
- It has announced a partnership with Google, with an additional deal in the works with Amazon Web Services.
- The company has also held meetings with OpenAI as it positions itself at the crossroads of US chip vendors, hyperscalers, and sovereign AI ambitions.
This combination — sovereign data centres, best-of-breed chips, and major cloud partnerships — is designed to make Humain a default landing zone for AI workloads in and around the Middle East.
IPO Ambitions and a New Kind of Startup
Humain may be barely months old, but it already has public markets in its sights.
Amin has said the company is targeting a dual listing on Saudi Arabia’s Tadawul exchange and NASDAQ within three to four years.
The company is also in talks with at least one major AI chip supplier about a potential equity investment — a move that would deepen alignment between its infrastructure roadmap and its supply of cutting-edge GPUs.
In other words, Humain is behaving like:
- A sovereign infrastructure project
- A hyperscale cloud–AI provider
- And an ambitious, globally oriented startup planning for capital markets
all at once. For founders across MENA, this sets a new reference point: “startup” no longer automatically means lean, capital-constrained, and purely private.
What This Means for MENA Founders
For the region’s startup ecosystem, Humain’s strategy carries both opportunity and tension.
1. Infrastructure as a Service — and as a Moat
On one hand, a network of Saudi-backed AI data centres and a voice-first OS stack could give MENA startups:
- Closer-to-home compute for training and deploying AI models
- Access to high-end GPUs and infrastructure that might otherwise be priced out of reach
- A platform (Humain One and its APIs) to build applications that are natively Arabic, voice-first, and enterprise-ready
On the other hand, the scale of Humain’s ambition — measured in gigawatts, tens of billions of dollars, and global listings — raises questions about market concentration. Will local startups be able to compete against a PIF-backed, vertically integrated AI giant, or will their best path be to build on top of Humain’s infrastructure?
2. Arabic-First AI Is Becoming Strategic, Not Niche
Humain and related initiatives are putting serious weight behind Arabic multimodal models, chat platforms, and sector-specific AI for Arabic-speaking markets.
For founders, this means:
- Arabic UX, data, and domain expertise are no longer a side project; they’re strategic differentiators.
- Startups that deeply understand local regulation, culture, and industries may become critical partners in deploying sovereign AI systems responsibly.
3. Sovereignty and Compliance as Product Features
Saudi Arabia’s national AI strategy emphasises data governance, public sector upskilling, and leadership training to ensure AI is deployed in line with national priorities.
That creates an opening for startups that can:
- Build tools around compliance, auditability, and safe deployment of AI
- Specialise in regulated sectors like healthcare, finance or public services
- Offer middleware that helps enterprises navigate between global models and sovereign infrastructure
Key Takeaways for the Ecosystem
For founders, operators, and investors across MENA, three lessons stand out from Humain’s latest moves:
- Voice and intent are the new UI.
- Humain One is a bet that we’re moving from “click the app” to “say the goal”. Expect a wave of startups building workflows, copilots, and vertical tools that plug into voice-first interfaces.
- Compute is the real chokepoint.
- The headline number is not the OS; it’s 6 GW of planned capacity and multiple 500 MW projects with Nvidia and AMD. Startups that understand how to optimise for scarce, expensive compute — or help others do so — will be in demand.
- Sovereign AI is going mainstream.
- From Arabic LLMs to national data strategies, AI is now part of statecraft. Founders who can navigate that intersection of technology, regulation, and geopolitics will shape the next decade of MENA’s innovation story.
Editor’s Note — The Startups MENA Team
At Startups MENA, we track the inflection points where policy, capital, and product collide. Humain’s voice-first OS and 6 GW infrastructure ambition are one of those moments.
This is more than a corporate launch or a big-capex announcement. It signals a shift in how the Middle East thinks about digital power: compute, not just crude, as strategic capacity.
By combining sovereign data centres, partnerships with global chipmakers, and an operating system built around natural language, Humain is helping define what “AI infrastructure” means for a region that wants to own — not rent — its technological future. For founders, that raises the bar and expands the canvas:
- The bar, because the scale and speed of public–private AI projects are unprecedented.
- The canvas, because a deeper, more capable infrastructure layer opens space for thousands of specialised applications, tools, and companies to emerge on top.
As Saudi Arabia pushes toward Vision 2030 and positions itself as an AI and data hub, the question for the wider region is no longer whether AI will be built here — it’s who will build with it, on it, and around it. That is where MENA’s next generation of founders, builders, and operators comes in.
— The Startups MENA Editorial Team
