Saudi Arabia is using its oil money to grow in artificial intelligence.
Its main tool is a local company named Humain. The company is owned by the country’s nearly one-trillion-dollar sovereign wealth fund.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman announced Humain in May.
Humain’s chief executive, Tareq Amin, says the country’s low-cost power helps AI projects.
“Our strong energy grid is ready. We do not need to build new power stations for data centers. This saves us about 18 months,” he told CNN.
Humain wants to build up to six gigawatts of data-center power by 2034.
It is working with famous tech firms such as Nvidia, AMD, Amazon Web Services, Qualcomm, and Cisco.
On Tuesday, Humain signed a three-billion-dollar deal with the U.S. investment company Blackstone to build more data centers in Saudi Arabia.
The company also showed Humain One, a new computer system that lets people speak or type commands instead of clicking icons.
Humain already uses Humain One in its own offices. AI runs most of its human-resources, finance, legal, operations, and IT work.
Now only one person works in the payroll department. AI agents do the rest of the job.
Saudi Arabia wants AI growth to help its Vision 2030 plan, especially while oil prices are falling.
The United Arab Emirates is also moving fast. Its company G42 is building a huge project called Stargate UAE with partners like OpenAI and Oracle.
Amin says there is room for both countries. He believes spreading AI knowledge around the world is good for everyone.