Saudi Arabia's Humain has expanded its partnership with US chip maker Nvidia to develop up to 84 megawatts of artificial intelligence computing capacity, including infrastructure for an unnamed American customer, as the kingdom accelerates its push to become a global AI hub.
The agreement, announced at Nvidia's GTC conference in Berlin on Thursday, covers about 27,000 advanced graphics processing units (GPUs), with deployments beginning later this year and further capacity planned for 2027.
The expansion builds on a partnership announced in May 2025 during US President Donald Trump's visit to Riyadh, when Nvidia unveiled plans to supply Humain with hundreds of thousands of advanced AI chips over five years. The initial phase involved 18,000 Blackwell processors, part of a broader plan to develop up to 500MW of AI computing capacity over five years.
The first phase of the latest agreement will comprise 14MW of Nvidia's Blackwell HGX B300 systems, equivalent to about 6,000 GPUs, with deployment starting in the fourth quarter. The infrastructure will support Humain Cloud customers, including AI companies, government entities and businesses.
A further 70MW of Nvidia's next-generation Vera Rubin infrastructure, representing about 21,000 GPUs, is planned from mid-2027.
Of that, 50MW will be dedicated to advanced AI workloads for an unidentified US client, with deployment targeted to begin in June. The remaining 20MW will support Humain Cloud, with deployment expected to begin in July or August.
The companies said the Vera Rubin projects remain subject to final agreements and deployment plans.
GPUs are powerful processors used to train and run AI systems. Blackwell is Nvidia's current generation of AI chips, while Vera Rubin is its successor, designed to handle more complex workloads faster and more efficiently.
“We are moving quickly to bring the next generations of Nvidia-accelerated computing into Saudi Arabia at meaningful scale,” Humain chief executive Tareq Amin said.
Launched in May 2025 and chaired by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Humain is owned by the kingdom's Public Investment Fund and plans to develop about 3GW of data centre capacity by 2030 and more than 6GW by 2034.
Saudi Arabia is competing with the UAE to attract AI investment. In Abu Dhabi, G42, OpenAI and Oracle are developing Stargate UAE, a 1GW computing cluster that forms the first phase of a planned 5GW UAE-US AI campus, with Nvidia also a technology partner.
Both Gulf countries depend on US export approvals to obtain advanced AI chips, making Washington's technology restrictions an important factor in their expansion plans.
The latest announcement comes days after Saudi Arabia postponed its flagship Future Investment Initiative conference from October 26-29 to next year. This followed a Houthi attack on Riyadh's King Khalid International Airport on October 10 that killed at least 13 people and injured more than 300.
Mr Amin was among the speakers scheduled to attend gathering, which has become a major platform for announcing investment agreements involving Saudi Arabia's technology and infrastructure sectors.
The FII Institute says the annual conference has helped to secure $250 billion in signed agreements and investment pledges since its inception.