Trump's "Humain" AI Middle East Visit

Weird deals just went down. New powers emerge as AI arms race accelerates with more regions taking their place.

Welcome Back!

I’ve been trying to make sense of Trump’s deal-making with Saudi and the UAE in the semiconductor industry of the past week. There are serious geopolitical, regional and business implications here.

Trump’s maniacal deal-making ambitious hide a lot of fairly serious risks in these moves. Neither does Trump’s trip to the Gulf suddenly transform the Middle East into a global AI powerhouse, like it is often claimed in the PR statements.

Giving AI chip capabilities to countries where human rights are not a priority is also a statement in of itself about the AI leadership of the United States in 2025.

That’s not to say that they aren’t building datacenters. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the United States will establish a regional artificial intelligence technology cluster in Abu Dhabi, together with a 5 Gigawatt (GW) capacity data centre, building out short-term 1 GW capacity during phase one.

Trump has now with these deals opened the door for the Gulf to obtain the world's most advanced AI chips. Good in theory for the likes of Nvidia, AMD and others.

The Biggest Deals

This week's U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum in Riyadh showcased a growing partnership in artificial intelligence between the two nations, alongside Saudi Arabia’s launch of Humain, a new AI venture backed by its $940 billion Public Investment Fund (PIF).

• Strategic investment: DataVolt committed $20 billion for U.S. AI data centres, while Saudi’s new AI firm Humain plans to deploy 500 MW each of AMD and Nvidia systems (roughly $20+ billion) over five years, the largest bilateral deal in history.

• Ecosystem expansion: Humain signed a $5 billion accord with AWS to build an “AI Zone” running GenAI services, and a non-binding MOU with Qualcomm for edge-to-cloud AI silicon.

• Broader impact: Trump’s AI advisor David Sacks emphasised building “the biggest partner ecosystem” for AI, specifically naming Saudi Arabia as a crucial strategic partner to “win the AI race and shift the balance of power” in global AI infrastructure.

Humain’s flurry of deals sounds impressive, at least on paper. Huge deals with Nvidia, AWS and so forth.

Humain’s partners:

The deal also involved Saudi buying U.S. weapons.

“Humain will be owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, and will work on developing AI models as well as building data center infrastructure, according to a press release. Humain’s plans eventually include deploying “several hundred thousand” Nvidia graphics processing units.”

What is Humain again?

Humain, is a subsidiary of Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, aims to establish the Saudi Arabia as an international AI powerhouse by combining state-of-the-art infrastructure, advanced AI models, digital platforms, and human capital development.

• The company plans to build AI factories with a projected capacity of up to 500MW, powered by several hundred thousand of Nvidia's most advanced GPUs over the next five years.

• The first phase of deployment includes an 18,000 Nvidia GB300 Grace Blackwell AI supercomputer with NVIDIA InfiniBand networking.

• Humain claims it will deliver AI-native platforms across four core layers: Infrastructure, Cloud, Data & Models, and Applications.

While the stock market seemed to like Trump’s announcements, there are many risks to this sort of pomp and extravagance, including China AI chip risks.

• In Saudi Arabia, Trump and tech leaders from AMD, Amazon and other companies announced AI-related partnerships worth billions of dollars with a new Saudi-state-backed AI infrastructure startup called Humain. Nvidia said it will ship 18,000 of its cutting-edge AI chips for a 500-megawatt data center being built by Humain.

• In the UAE, Trump and Emirati President Mohammed bin Zayed said the two countries will partner to build the largest AI data center outside the U.S., in Abu Dhabi.