AWS confirmed its Saudi Arabia cloud region is on track for a December 2026 launch, supporting regional AI and enterprise workloads.

AWS has confirmed that its first cloud region in Saudi Arabia remains on track to launch in December 2026. The rollout coincides with a planned partnership with HUMAIN to establish a Saudi AI Zone offering up to 50 megawatts of capacity by 2028, expanding on the company’s initial infrastructure announcement.

Designed for developers, startups, enterprises, and public-sector organizations, the new region will enable local application deployment and customer data storage within the Kingdom. AWS stated the region will debut with three Availability Zones, bringing the company’s global footprint to 40 regions.

AWS initially unveiled the project in March 2024, pledging an investment exceeding US$5.3 billion (approximately SAR19.88 billion). While Reuters originally reported that the data centers would open in 2026, the company has now specified December as the launch target.

Matt Garman, CEO of AWS, emphasized that the region and HUMAIN collaboration would foster economic growth. “The launch of our new Region and our partnership with HUMAIN will deliver the full-stack cloud and AI infrastructure to help power new industries, create jobs, and accelerate the goals of Vision 2030,” Garman said.

The dedicated AI Zone will feature AWS Trainium chips and NVIDIA infrastructure to support AI training and inference workloads. Additionally, HUMAIN’s ALLAM Arabic large language model will be accessible via Amazon Bedrock, and HUMAIN Fabric will be listed on the AWS Marketplace. These components were detailed in AWS’s broader partnership announcement in May 2025.

Several Saudi entities, including stc Group, Almosafer, and Abdul Latif Jameel, will utilize AWS services for AI workloads. The company is also collaborating with Saudi universities and government agencies on cloud and AI education initiatives. Through Amazon Academy, AWS aims to train over 100,000 Saudi citizens, alongside a separate program designed to provide complimentary training to up to 10,000 women.

The new Saudi region supplements AWS’s existing Middle East infrastructure in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. This development follows previous coverage of AWS training programs at MBZUAI and Snowflake’s UAE launch hosted on AWS.