Saudi Arabia's HUMAIN is preparing to launch a large venture capital fund that could exceed a previously planned $10 billion vehicle, according to CEO Tareq Amin, who disclosed the plans in an interview published Wednesday. The company, owned by the Public Investment Fund (PIF), is pressing ahead with its bid to turn the kingdom into a hub for global AI compute.

HUMAIN is reportedly targeting a $2.5 billion fund dedicated specifically to data centers, a figure the company acknowledged sits at the smaller end of announced Gulf AI commitments. Those commitments include multi-billion-dollar AI infrastructure projects by Saudi neighbors such as the United Arab Emirates, which has attracted US-backed data center ventures of its own, making the region one of the fastest-growing markets for AI compute capacity.

No passive investments and a domestic arm, HUMAIN Limitless

"We don't do passive investments, that will never happen," Amin said. The fund will only back companies that agree to run some of their compute on Saudi data centers or relocate staff to the kingdom. The condition ties outside capital directly to demand for HUMAIN's domestic infrastructure, giving the venture arm a role in feeding the data center buildout it is financing.

Offices are planned in the United States, Saudi Arabia, France, and the United Kingdom, a spread the CEO said is intended to accelerate the pace of deals.

Alongside the global vehicle, HUMAIN intends to establish a separate arm, HUMAIN Limitless, to fund and support AI companies operating inside Saudi Arabia, part of the kingdom's broader effort to build a domestic AI ecosystem rather than simply host foreign compute.

The xAI wager behind the plan

HUMAIN's growing appetite stems in part from a single deal. The CEO described the company's $3 billion investment in Elon Musk's xAI in February as "a home run." That stake was converted into SpaceX equity after xAI merged with the rocket company.

Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, which controls HUMAIN together with Aramco, has since disclosed a $26 billion holding in SpaceX. According to Amin, that earlier investment demonstrates the strategy works. For PIF, one of the world's largest sovereign wealth funds, the stake adds to a technology portfolio that has become a central plank of the kingdom's economic diversification drive.

A buildout financed on bankable offtake deals

Since its founding by the PIF, HUMAIN has moved quickly, flagging six gigawatts of AI data centers in the kingdom by 2034. The company has also secured a 16-gigawatt power commitment from the Saudi Ministry of Energy and struck deals with Nvidia, Groq, Qualcomm, and xAI.

The spending is being funded partly through debt. Amin said global hyperscaler demand allows HUMAIN to borrow against offtake agreements with large technology firms, describing those contracts as "bankable." Securing long-term commitments from creditworthy tenants before construction is the same financing model that has underpinned large data center projects in the United States, where hyperscalers and investment firms have raised substantial debt against pre-leased capacity.

A $3 billion partnership with Blackstone is helping cover data center deals. Amin stated that computing in Saudi Arabia is roughly 30% cheaper than elsewhere, which he said explains why demand has remained steady despite regional conflict.

Al Moammar Information Systems reportedly expanded a HUMAIN data center contract to 250 megawatts (MW), a deal now valued at more than 8.76 billion riyals, approximately $2.34 billion.

HUMAIN recently partnered with DataVolt on the first 100 MW phase of a 360 MW facility in Neom's Oxagon zone, slated for 2028. Saudi AI and cloud expansion is estimated to require up to $42 billion by 2030.

Chips secured, data centers hardened, and a line drawn at Chinese models

Access to advanced silicon is central to these plans. The US approved its first exports of advanced AI chips to HUMAIN in November 2025, a milestone for the kingdom, whose access to top-tier US chips had previously been constrained by Washington's export control regime. Amin said a US-Saudi strategic AI partnership provides the company with the chip capacity it needs. "I don't see any obstacles or issues for us to obtain the chip capacity we need," he said.

In light of export controls imposed on China, Saudi Arabia, an ally of President Trump's US administration, is working to stay compliant with those restrictions. HUMAIN will therefore not allow Chinese frontier labs to train models on its compute. It will offer only inference access to Chinese open-source models, a split Amin said keeps the company within the US framework because it is "not furnishing a training cluster to Chinese frontier labs." The distinction matters because US rules restrict the use of American advanced chips for training Chinese frontier models, and Gulf states seeking US silicon must demonstrate compliance to keep supply flowing.

Security has also climbed the agenda. With AI infrastructure elsewhere in the Gulf hit during the US-Iran war, Amin said HUMAIN is hardening and distributing its sites, treating them, in his words, "like critical national infrastructure."