사우디아라비아의 선도적인 AI 기업은 왕국 전역의 데이터 센터 급속 확장을 위한 자금 조달을 가속화하고 있다.

Saudi AI company Humain has begun preparations for an initial public offering, following CEO Tareq Amin’s announcement that he is assembling a team of experts to lay the groundwork for its listing. Since its launch last year, Humain has secured partnerships and deals with xAI, Nvidia, Amazon Web Services, Adobe, and Cisco, among others. These achievements have been underpinned by financing from Saudi Arabia’s $900 billion Public Investment Fund (PIF), which established Humain in May 2025 as the primary engine for delivering the kingdom’s AI ambitions. Pursuing an IPO marks a notable shift for a company whose growth has thus far relied heavily on state capital.

“This is a funding-discipline decision as much as a monetization one, at a point when PIF has been explicit that portfolio companies must reduce their draw on the sovereign,” Kurt Davis Jr, head of debt and capital advisory for the Middle East and Africa at professional services firm Alvarez & Marsal, told Fortune. “A listing gives permanent capital, audited disclosure, and a public credit story that lowers the cost of the debt behind the build-out. The difficulty is sequencing: a 2029 listing puts the company in front of public investors mid-construction, with most of its capex still ahead of it.”

Last week, Bloomberg reported that G42, backed by the UAE sovereign wealth fund Mubadala, is also exploring outside capital. Executives have held preliminary discussions with U.S. companies regarding a potential sale of a majority stake, with experts noting the company’s efforts to secure access to advanced semiconductors beyond next year. The UAE was recently upgraded to an A:5 export control designation by the United States, permitting G42 to purchase advanced chips without a license until 2027, provided its corporate structure remains unchanged.

“Beyond the question of capital, the story could be read through the lens of export controls,” said Mohammed Soliman, director of AI and compute infrastructure at McLarty Associates. “Both G42 and Humain want to stay within the American AI ecosystem. Outside capital and a possible American majority are how they keep this valuable access. Humain is doing the same thing. Saudi Arabia does not have that A:5 designation yet, and so bringing in outside investors is how the Humain team gets ready for a G42-style arrangement with Washington and how they also finance the build-out itself.”

In addition to its planned IPO, Bloomberg reported last week that Humain is tapping global and local investors to raise a $2.5 billion fund dedicated to financing a new wave of data center expansion across the kingdom. Meanwhile, Amin revealed that the $10 billion global AI venture capital fund first outlined last year could launch at an even larger scale by the end of 2026. Notably, he stated the company will only invest in firms that commit to routing part of their computing needs through Saudi data centers or establishing a workforce within the country. Humain also plans to support domestic AI ventures through a new investment vehicle, Humain Limitless. “We don’t do passive investments,” Amin said.

Humain has publicly outlined a roadmap to build 1.9 gigawatts (GW) of AI computing capacity across Saudi Arabia by 2030, scaling to more than 6 GW by 2034. Despite the ongoing U.S.-Iran war, the company confirmed to Bloomberg last week that its development timeline remains on track. According to official Saudi data, the kingdom’s data center capacity has expanded sevenfold, rising from 68 megawatts (MW) in 2021 to 467 MW in the first quarter of 2026. Investment in data centers and digital infrastructure has surpassed SR56.2 billion ($14.98 billion).

The Saudi data center market retains significant growth potential, according to a report published by Alvarez & Marsal last month. The kingdom currently offers just 12 watts of data center capacity per capita, compared to approximately 50 in both the UAE and the United States. “This level of under penetration, in a market with this much capital behind it, is a build-out waiting to be financed,” the report noted. It identifies three primary forces driving demand: a cloud-first public sector mandate reinforced by data sovereignty and personal data protection legislation; hyperscalers increasingly opting to lease rather than construct facilities in emerging markets; and AI workloads whose economics hinge on power costs and availability—a comparative advantage the kingdom is actively leveraging in its pitch.

Alvarez & Marsal estimates that Saudi Arabia’s AI and cloud expansion by 2030 will require up to $42 billion in project capital, including $32 billion in debt, assuming roughly half of its announced data center capacity is delivered. However, securing long-term enterprise customers amid the current geopolitical climate may prove difficult. In early March, two Amazon Web Services data centers in the UAE were directly struck by drones, while another facility in Bahrain sustained damage from a nearby attack. AWS was forced to migrate computing workloads to other regions and warned that recovery would be “prolonged, given the nature of the physical damage involved.” The incidents marked the first time military strikes had directly disrupted the operations of a major U.S. technology company’s data centers.

With billions of dollars still required to complete the kingdom’s AI and data center infrastructure, attracting global investment will be critical, particularly as shifting geopolitical risks and export controls continue to reshape the region’s technology landscape. For Humain, the central challenge lies in transforming Saudi Arabia into a globally competitive AI ecosystem while simultaneously safeguarding access to the international technology and semiconductor supply chains upon which it depends.