Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) took the wraps off a new company focused on AI development, as part of the nation’s push to become a global competitive hub in the field.
PIF stated the entity, called Humain, will invest across the AI value chain. It will provide a range of services, products and tools, including next-generation data centres, infrastructure, cloud capabilities and advanced AI models.
It will also offer one of the world’s “most powerful” multimodal Arabic large language models.
Launched by PIF chairman and the country’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Humain builds on his long-standing goal for Saudi Arabia to become a global centre for data and AI, as well as contributing to a wider push around the technology sector.
PIF explained its companies are actively investing in building an AI ecosystem and fostering international partnerships, allowing partners to “benefit from Saudi Arabia’s value proposition including its strategic location at the nexus of three continents”.
The investment fund argued this enables large volumes of data to be processed, while it further pointed to a tech-savvy population which supports AI research and innovation.
Serving as a global and regional hub, Humain added it will look to incorporate and develop AI across a number of strategic sectors, including energy, healthcare, manufacturing and financial services.