Six months ago, Saudi Arabia placed a very public bet on something less predictable. It ventured into AI with Humain. A company this young might seem tentative, but Humain was imagined differently. From the outset, it was conceived as a sovereign-scale initiative to build an AI ecosystem.

The timing wasn’t accidental. Vision 2030 has long been about economic diversification, but its next phase is about intellectual capacity. Backed and guided by the Public Investment Fund, Humain marks a deliberate shift. It is an experiment in how a nation can cultivate knowledge, capability, and confidence around a technology that is still taking shape. 

At the helm is CEO Tareq Amin. His work is less about showmanship and more about transforming Saudi Arabia’s national ambition into a self-sustaining AI enterprise, combining expertise, talent, and infrastructure to create systems capable of operating, adapting, and competing on a truly global scale.

HUMAIN’S DIFFERENTIATION

HUMAIN was designed from the ground up to serve the Middle East. Unlike many global AI companies that retrofit their technologies for Arabic speakers, HUMAIN started with Arabic as its foundation. “This ensures cultural and linguistic relevance is at the heart of what we build rather than treated as an afterthought,” says Amin. 

Building on this foundation, HUMAIN also takes an integrated approach to AI. Infrastructure, data, models, and applications are usually handled by separate organizations, which slows innovation and creates fragmentation. By unifying the entire AI value chain under one roof, HUMAIN can innovate faster and deliver solutions that are directly relevant to its users.

Trust plays a central role in HUMAIN’s strategy and in how it engages with users. “Technology will continue to evolve and speed is always relative, but trust is what determines whether AI is adopted at scale,” he explains. At HUMAIN, trust is cultivated through strong partnerships, adherence to national regulations, and transparency in model training and evaluation. The company’s alignment with the Kingdom’s priorities on sovereignty and security further reassures users that HUMAIN is built for long-term interests.

At the core of HUMAIN’s vision is the concept of an AI-native enterprise. Rather than treating AI as an added feature, such enterprises are designed around AI from the start, embedding intelligence into processes, workflows, and products. 

Amin highlights HUMAIN ONE, the company’s AI-native operating system that debuted at the 9th Future Investment Initiative (FII). “We are going from disjointed approaches with oftentimes thousands of applications, programs, and icons to one streamlined system to run enterprise processes with the use of AI,” he says. Every layer of HUMAIN’s stack, from networks to models to applications, is designed to learn, adapt, and continually improve, exemplifying what it truly means to be AI-native.

This philosophy naturally extends to HUMAIN’s networks, which form the backbone of its AI-native systems. In Amin’s view, “The network that thinks must come first. Intelligence is only as useful as the infrastructure that enables it.” Strong networks allow AI to scale effectively and deliver consistent performance. Without this foundation, even the most advanced AI models would remain fragmented and underused.

SCALING INTELLIGENCE LOCALLY

ALLAM 34B marks a significant milestone for Arabic speakers worldwide. “For too long, they have been underserved by generative AI,” says Amin. By creating an Arabic-first model, HUMAIN is opening new opportunities across education, healthcare, business, and government services. The model also signals that the Arab world is not merely a consumer of AI but an active contributor. “ALLAM 34B demonstrates that advanced models can be built here to address both regional and international nuances and challenges. It shifts the balance of where innovation comes from,” he adds.

Building on the capabilities of ALLAM 34B, HUMAIN Chat was developed with Arabic at its core rather than as an added feature. ALLAM 34B was trained on what the company believes is the largest Arabic dataset ever assembled and refined with input from more than 600 domain experts and 250 evaluators. This meticulous approach ensures the system is sensitive to dialects, context, and cultural nuance, resulting in a platform that feels natural and relevant to Arabic speakers in their daily lives.

Creating these AI tools also requires navigating the region’s regulatory environment. In Saudi Arabia, regulation is treated as an enabler rather than a barrier. Amin explains that HUMAIN works closely with policymakers to ensure technology and regulation advance together, creating a framework where innovation can scale safely and responsibly. By designing with sovereignty and compliance in mind from the start, HUMAIN ensures that speed does not come at the expense of trust. Users and regulators alike can have confidence in how the company builds and deploys its technologies.

Building the infrastructure to support this vision presents both technical and human challenges. HUMAIN has begun construction of its first data centers in Riyadh and Dammam, with an expected launch in the second quarter of 2026. These facilities are the foundation of a long-term plan to reach 1.9 gigawatts of capacity by 2030 and 6.6 gigawatts by 2034. On the technical side, Amin notes that power and cooling systems must sustain AI-intensive workloads while meeting high standards of efficiency and sustainability. On the human side, the focus is on developing Saudi talent capable of operating and optimizing these facilities, ensuring that the built capacity is matched by the expertise to manage it effectively.

HUMAIN also faces critical decisions in designing AI-native networks. “The key trade-off is between optimizing for today’s needs and preparing for tomorrow’s scale,” Amin says. Networks built only for current workloads often struggle to meet future demands. HUMAIN chooses to invest ahead of demand, a strategy that requires higher upfront costs but ensures the infrastructure remains resilient, sovereign, and future-ready.

Finally, the networks themselves must be intelligent and adaptive. “A smart network is one that can learn, adopt, and secure itself in real time,” Amin explains. Such networks anticipate demand, allocate resources efficiently, and reduce latency to improve performance. By enabling new applications and services dynamically, a smart network becomes an active part of the value chain rather than just the infrastructure supporting it.

BUILDING PEOPLE AND PLATFORMS

HUMAIN has forged partnerships with global technology leaders, including AMD, Cisco, and Groq, gaining access to advanced tools and expertise. Despite these collaborations, independence remains a central component of the company’s strategy. Amin emphasizes, “Independence comes from owning our architecture, our models, and our vision.” By defining its own strategic direction, HUMAIN ensures that these partnerships strengthen Saudi Arabia’s digital ecosystem. Rather than compromising autonomy, these collaborations allow the company to scale more quickly while maintaining control over its future.

This openness to external expertise naturally extends to the idea of open innovation. Amin sees immense potential in allowing developers to engage directly with HUMAIN’s technology. “If HUMAIN were open-sourced, developers would create applications rooted in their own contexts,” he says. This could include new tools in education, healthcare, or finance that are specifically designed to meet local needs. The most unexpected and impactful use cases often emerge from those closest to the challenges. Amin notes, “That is the power of open source: it enables innovation from the ground up.”

Building such a pioneering company also requires a unique approach to talent. Amin is passionate about hiring individuals who are both dreamers and doers. “Dreamers think big picture, and doers get things done. Finding the two qualities in one person is rare in the outside world, but it is a prerequisite at HUMAIN,” he explains. 

Many of HUMAIN’s breakthroughs have come from local talent willing to experiment, learn quickly, and offer fresh perspectives. Amin adds, “That combination of curiosity and resilience is what we value most. I could not be prouder of the team we have built and continue to build, who are passionate about HUMAIN and where we’re going.”

AI FOR PEOPLE AND PROGRESS

For HUMAIN, the potential of AI extends far beyond individual cities. While cities serve as testing grounds for AI-native networks, Amin sees the real transformation occurring at the level of entire economies. “The opportunity lies in enabling sectors like healthcare, logistics, energy, and finance to run on sovereign AI-native infrastructure,” he explains. By scaling AI in this way, the impact moves beyond creating smart cities to building strong and resilient nations that can fully harness the technology’s potential.

This broader perspective leads Amin to reflect on the lessons from the internet’s development. “If we were building the internet today, connectivity would be at the core. Everyone should have access to the tools they need to succeed,” he says. 

He adds that access to knowledge has historically been uneven, and he hopes AI will soon be viewed in the same way, as a human right. Key principles for a rebuilt internet, according to Amin, would include sovereignty and security. The original internet created vulnerabilities that persist to this day. A modern redesign would remain global and interoperable but would allow each nation to protect its digital infrastructure and safeguard its data with confidence.

HUMAIN’s work is closely tied to Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 and the Public Investment Fund’s long-term goals for technology leadership. “HUMAIN, as a PIF company that is redefining the end-to-end AI value chain, is enabling key sectors under Vision 2030 to reach their full potential,” Amin says. By building sovereign infrastructure, training local talent, and developing applications that serve both domestic and international needs, HUMAIN is strengthening the Kingdom’s role in shaping the next era of technology.

Looking ahead, Amin believes HUMAIN’s success will render certain current challenges obsolete. “Fragmentation. Today, AI is divided across providers, platforms, and regions, which creates inefficiencies and slows progress,” he notes. 

HUMAIN’s vision is to make AI seamless by integrating networks, models, and applications into a single, accessible system. In this future, the idea of a fragmented AI ecosystem will no longer exist.