Saudi’s Humain turns to outside investment as the kingdom reins in fiscal spending 

Saudi AI company Humain has begun preparations for its IPO, after its CEO Tareq Amin announced he was assembling a team of experts to help lay the groundwork for its listing. 

While he did not specify a date for the IPO, Amin told the Future Investment Initiative conference last October that his aim was to list Humain in both Saudi Arabia and New York by 2029. 

Since its launch last year, Humain has secured deals and partnerships with xAI, Nvidia, Amazon Web Services, Adobe and Cisco, to name a few.

Those achievements have been underpinned by finance from Saudi Arabia’s $900 billion Public Investment Fund which established Humain in May 2025 as the key engine for delivering its AI ambitions.  

The pursuit of an IPO marks a notable shift for a company whose growth so far has largely been funded by state capital.

“This is a funding-discipline decision as much as a monetization one, at a point when PIF has been explicit that portfolio companies must reduce their draw on the sovereign,” said Kurt Davis Jr, head of debt and capital advisory for the Middle East and Africa at professional services firm Alvarez & Marsal.  

“A listing gives permanent capital, audited disclosure, and a public credit story that lowers the cost of the debt behind the build-out. The difficulty is sequencing: a 2029 listing puts the company in front of public investors mid-construction, with most of its capex still ahead of it.” 

Last week, G42, which is backed by UAE sovereign fund Mubadala, revealed it is also looking to raise outside capital. 

Executives have held preliminary talks with U.S. companies over a potential sale of a majority stake, with experts noting how the company is seeking to secure access to advanced chips beyond next year.  

The UAE was recently upgraded to an A:5 export control designation by the U.S., which allows G42 to buy advanced chips without a license until 2027, unless it changes its structure. 

“Beyond the question of capital, the story could be read through the lens of export controls,” said Mohammed Soliman, director of AI and compute infrastructure at McLarty Associates.  

“Both G42 and Humain want to stay within the American AI ecosystem. Outside capital and a possible American majority are how they keep this valuable access.  

“Humain is doing the same thing. Saudi Arabia does not have that A:5 designation yet and so bringing in outside investors is how the Humain team gets ready for a G42-style arrangement with Washington and how they also finance the build-out itself.” 

In addition to its planned IPO, Bloomberg reported last week that Humain is also looking to tap global and local investors to raise a $2.5 billion fund to finance a new wave of data center expansion across the kingdom.

Meanwhile, Amin revealed that the $10 billion global AI venture capital fund that Humain first outlined last year could launch at an even larger scale by the end of 2026.  

Notably, he said the company will only invest in companies that commit to using Saudi data centers for part of their computing needs or establishing a workforce in the country.  

It also plans to invest in and support AI companies in Saudi Arabia through a new investment vehicle Humain Limitless. “We don’t do passive investments,” Amin said.  

Humain has also been vocal about actively pursuing a roadmap to build 1.9 gigawatts (GW) of AI computing capacity across Saudi Arabia by 2030 and over 6 GW by 2034. 

It told Bloomberg last week that its timeline remains on track despite the U.S.-Iran war. 

The kingdom’s data center capacity expanded sevenfold, from 68 megawatts (MW) in 2021 to 467 megawatts in the first quarter of 2026, according to official Saudi data, as investment in data centers and digital infrastructure surpassed SR56.2 billion ($14.98 billion). 

The Saudi data center market has considerable room for growth, according to a report published by Alvarez & Marsal last month. The kingdom has 12 watts of data center capacity per capita, compared to around 50 in the UAE and U.S. 

“This level of under penetration, in a market with this much capital behind it, is a build-out waiting to be financed,” it said.

It highlights three key forces driving demand: A cloud-first public sector mandate underpinned by data sovereignty and personal data protection legislation; hyperscalers that increasingly lease rather than build in new markets; and AI workloads whose economics depend on the cost and availability of power, which is a comparative advantage the kingdom is building its pitch around.  

According to Alvarez & Marsal, Saudi’s AI and cloud expansion by 2030 will require up to $42 billion in project capital, including $32 billion of debt, if around half of its announced data centre capacity is delivered. 

However, securing long-term customers amid the current geopolitical environment could prove a challenge.  

In early March, two Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centers in the UAE were directly struck by drones, while one of its centers in Bahrain was damaged by a nearby drone strike.  

AWS was forced to transfer computing workloads to other regions and said that it expected the recovery to be “prolonged, given the nature of the physical damage involved.”   

The strikes were significant for marking the first time that military attacks had directly targeted and disrupted the data center operations of a major U.S. tech company.  

With billions of dollars still required to build out the kingdom’s AI and data centre infrastructure, attracting global investors will be crucial, particularly as geopolitical risks and export controls reshape the region’s technology landscape.

For Humain, the challenge will be turning Saudi Arabia into a globally competitive AI ecosystem while maintaining access to the international technology and chip supply chains it depends on.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com