Saudi Arabian AI ambitions received a boost as its dedicated business Humain secured a host of deals with big names including Qualcomm and Cisco.

Qualcomm detailed plans to establish the AI Engineering Centre at a Humain facility in Riyadh, advancing a previous data centre access arrangement.

The centre is scheduled to open next month, focusing on accelerating the development and deployment of Humain edge-to-cloud services, along with broadening access to the Saudi company’s AI services.

Qualcomm’s engineering site is also tasked with integrating AI models, and developing the technology and broader market.

President and CEO Cristiano Amon (pictured, left), said the facility would “serve as a key technology and ecosystem development hub”.

Humain CEO Tareq Amin (pictured, right) added the companies hope to “unlock value across industries” and establish a leading position in AI technology.

JV
The Saudi Public Investment Fund company separately agreed to establish a joint venture with Cisco and AMD to deliver up to 1GW of AI infrastructure by 2030.

Humain, Cisco and AMD are to be founding investors in the JV, which they aim to have operational in 2026 with the deployment of 100MW of capacity.

The business will draw on Humain’s data centres, AMD’s Instinct MI450 series GPUs and Cisco’s critical infrastructure.

Amin said the JV would push “the frontier of AI compute” and provide the capacity needed to meet demand in Saudi Arabia and beyond.

Cisco research indicates GPU capacity is currently a limitation on Saudi Arabia’s AI ambitions despite a majority of companies plotting moves involving agentic iterations.

CEO Chuck Robbins believes the JV will provide the “secure, scalable, critical infrastructure” needed to deliver on Saudi Arabia’s “vision for a digitally advanced” economy based on AI.

AMD chair and CEO Lisa Su explained collaborations are key to providing “high-performance global AI infrastructure at scale”, adding the company intends to establish a centre of excellence to drive innovation and oversee integration.