Inside Saudi Arabia’s AI Ambition: Tareq Amin on Building a New Tech Superpower

Tareq Amin is a Jordanian-American technologist and the CEO of HUMAIN, Saudi Arabia’s flagship full-stack AI company backed by the Public Investment Fund (PIF).

Launched in May 2025 by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), HUMAIN serves as the cornerstone of the Kingdom’s push to become a global AI leader and diversify its economy under Vision 2030.

Born in Amman, Jordan, Amin moved to the United States to complete his education, earning a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering and Physics from Portland State University in Oregon.

Over two decades, he built a career at the intersection of telecom infrastructure, digital transformation, and large-scale technology deployment across the US, India, and Japan—experience that directly informs his current work in AI.

Vision for Saudi Arabia as a Tech Superpower

Amin’s vision positions Saudi Arabia not merely as an AI adopter or consumer but as a sovereign builder and global shaper of the technology—specifically aiming to make the Kingdom the world’s #3 AI infrastructure provider (after the US and China) and a top-5 hub for AI training and inference.

HUMAIN operates as Saudi Arabia’s “full-stack AI operating company,” spanning:

• Massive sovereign infrastructure (data centers and compute)
• Cloud platforms
• Advanced models (including Arabic-native LLMs)
• Enterprise applications and “physical AI” (robotics + digital twins)

This aligns directly with Vision 2030 to reduce oil dependence, drive economic diversification, and position the Kingdom as a global tech powerhouse. Saudi Arabia’s unique advantages—vast land, abundant and low-cost energy (critical for power-hungry AI data centers), strategic connectivity, and a young, tech-savvy population with returning PhD talent from Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Oxford, etc.—enable this leap. The government’s strong backing via the ~$1 trillion PIF provides capital scale and execution speed that few nations can match.

Ai Nation Strategy

Key elements of the strategy include:

Infrastructure-first approach — “The real game is infrastructure: compute, data, energy and connectivity. Without solving those, you’re layering gimmicks on top of fragile systems.” HUMAIN is building hyperscale data centers (e.g., in Riyadh and Dammam, with initial 100+ MW sites opening in early 2026 using US chips). It includes Saudi Arabia’s first AI Zone in Riyadh (partnered with AWS) designed for hundreds of thousands of AI chips, plus digital twin ecosystems for industries like energy and logistics. A $1.2 billion framework with national partners hyperscales capacity, and recent deliveries include Qualcomm AI100-powered racks (1,024 accelerators in phase one) for edge-to-cloud inferencing.

Global partnerships with sovereign control — HUMAIN has signed ~$23 billion in deals with NVIDIA (GB300 Blackwell platforms, Nemotron), AMD, AWS, Qualcomm, Groq, Cisco, and others. A landmark $3 billion investment in Elon Musk’s xAI (announced February 2026, part of xAI’s Series E and ahead of its SpaceX merger) includes a 500 MW AI compute partnership in the Kingdom. The approach: collaborate aggressively on frontier tech while owning the local stack to avoid “renting” AI capabilities.

Arabic-first and enterprise AI innovation — Development of ALLAM (a large language model for Arabic speakers worldwide) and Humain Chat (prioritizing Arabic language and cultural context rather than adapting English models). Humain One (or Horizon) is an intent-driven, multi-agent AI operating system for enterprises that aims to replace traditional software stacks with autonomous orchestration—handling everything from back-office processes to industry-specific workflows. “Physical AI” extends this to robotics and simulation for real-world sectors.

Talent, ethics, and global impact — Attract and empower returning Saudi talent (HUMAIN’s team includes dozens of top-tier PhDs motivated by national contribution). Emphasize ethical, democratized AI to prevent global concentration of power and ensure the Global South (and nations like Saudi) owns its AI future rather than depending on foreign systems. The ultimate goal: “change the world in AI” by delivering real value creation, scalable intelligence, and inclusive prosperity—making Saudi Arabia both a consumer and producer of cutting-edge AI while contributing to worldwide innovation.

In Amin’s own framing (from public appearances like the All-In Summit and interviews), HUMAIN embodies speed, purpose, and scale: “We are building with purpose and moving at speed.” Recent milestones—Qualcomm rack deployments, the xAI investment, government-wide rollout of Humain One, and expanding international collaborations—show this vision in rapid motion.

Through HUMAIN, Saudi Arabia is betting its oil-era wealth on becoming an AI-era superpower: energy-rich, infrastructure-dominant, model-sovereign, and application-innovative. Amin’s track record in building national-scale networks from scratch makes him the ideal leader to execute it. The ambition is bold, the resources unmatched, and the execution—under his leadership—already accelerating.