This was the week that Saudi Arabia’s HUMAIN accelerated its AI infrastructure buildout with new cloud, data centre and technology partnerships, while Bloomberg reported that the company is seeking $2.5 billion for a new data centre fund.
In other news, Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence’s Institute of Foundation Models released a fleet of fully open AI models spanning edge devices to a 375-billion-parameter flagship; the UAE Cabinet adopted a new AI Advisor System for federal decision-making; and major international technology companies announced new investments, cloud regions and AI infrastructure projects in Saudi Arabia.
Here are this week’s biggest AI news stories!
Monday, August 31st
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🔥 Microsoft to launch Saudi cloud region in November 2026
New datacentre infrastructure expected to create 100,000 local jobs
🔥 HUMAIN, DataVolt break ground on NEOM AI facility
First 100MW phase underway at Oxagon’s computing campus
🔥 Largest AMD inference cluster outside the US goes live in KSA
HUMAIN powers-up AMD-Cisco AI compute
🔥 HP brings Garage 2.0 AI startup incubator to Saudi Arabia
HP’s new Saudi incubator targets startups, educators and industry
🔥 Qualcomm opens Riyadh office in Gulf AI push
Gulf becomes testbed for chipmaker’s AI pivot
🔥 UAE launches National Programme for Advanced Sciences & Tech
Talent-focused programme has six tracks link research to industrial priorities
Tuesday, September 1st
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🔥 Aramco Digital unveils iCONNA industrial AI ecosystem at LEAP
Platform unifies national 450 MHz network and edge artificial intelligence
🔥 Nokia opens Riyadh R&D centre for AI network automation
Strategic hub aims to create and export Made-in-Saudi software globally
🔥 HUMAIN invests in Arabic-first technology firm Arabic AI
HUMAIN backs Arabic.AI, partners on translation and document intelligence
🔥 Together AI and HUMAIN partner on 250MW Saudi centre
Strategic deal targets $5 billion in first-year gross revenue
🔥 AWS confirms December 2026 launch for Saudi cloud region
Amazon confirms $5.3 billion Saudi investment
🔥 HUMAIN launches AI Cloud on NVIDIA Blackwell
Part of planned 500MW AI factory buildout; users include Ministry of Commerce
🔥 Adobe moves AI workloads to HUMAIN’s Qualcomm hub
Adobe’s data captioning now hosted on Qualcomm infrastructure
Wednesday, September 2nd
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🔥 UAE Cabinet adopts AI Advisor System for decision-making
Suite of 32 specialised AI agents supports federal ministers
🔥 AIREV releases Harness Arena to benchmark AI agent performance
Open-source platform uses blind Elo testing for real-world tasks
🔥 AI captures half of MENA VC funding
MAGNIT: MENA AI deal-flow falls as funding doubles; fewer, larger rounds
Thursday, September 3rd
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🔥 HUMAIN unveils 428B parameter Arabic model with MiniMax
Strategic model preview launches on HUMAIN Node ahead of open-weight release
🔥 MBZUAI’s IFM releases world’s largest fully open AI model
Six-model open fleet ranges from edge AI to 375B enterprise flagship
🔥 OmniOps, HPE sign sovereign AI deal
HPE partners with Saudi’s OmniOps to build sovereign infrastructure stack
Friday, September 4th
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🔥 HUMAIN seeks $2.5 billion for data centre fund - Bloomberg
Data centre fund to back 250MW site; to be managed by BSF Capital