Amazon has said it will invest “over $5 billion” in a strategic partnership to build an “AI zone” in Saudi Arabia, in collaboration with Humain, an AI company recently launched by Saudi Arabia’s ruler Mohammed Bin Salman.
AI Zones include dedicated Amazon Web Services (AWS) AI infrastructure, servers, networks, training and certification programs, according to a press release. Humain is committed to using AWS technology to develop AI solutions and working with AWS to provide access to tools and programs for Saudi Arabia-based AI startups.
AWS is participating in Tech Giants Nvidia, AMD and others to partner with Human, funded by the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund (PIF). American high-tech companies are considering PIF as their capital source. Companies such as Google and Salesforce have recently been working with PIF on AI-related projects and investments.
President Donald Trump and several high-tech industry allies attended US and Saudi investment forums on Tuesday. Under the new Trump administration’s initiative, US-based high-tech suppliers, including NVIDIA and AMD, are permitted to arrange transactions with Saudi companies.
Saudi Arabia has locally mandated the AI companies and services of Kingdom Store Data, urging vendors to place facilities to avoid losing contracts. Both Google and Oracle have announced expansion plans in their regions over the past year.
Amazon promised to spend billions of dollars on Saudi data centres in early March last year. On Tuesday, the company said it was dedating roughly $5.3 billion to develop the kingdom’s AWS region, which is scheduled to go online in 2026. The AI Zone’s commitment is a “additional investment” separate from around $5.3 billion, Amazon said. However, this is not clear when Amazon’s contribution to the AIA zone uses the tranches that were originally announced.
TechCrunch will contact Amazon for explanation and update this work if there is a reply.