HUMAIN, Cohere Partner on 50 MW AI Computing

HUMAIN, a subsidiary of Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, and Cohere, a company that builds sovereign AI systems, said they will partner on a 50 MW computing capacity project. The capacity is designed for training and running large language models, the two companies said in a statement.

The project adds to a rapid expansion of data center infrastructure in Saudi Arabia. The kingdom aims to attract $20 billion in cloud and data center investment by 2030 under its Vision 2030 plan. HUMAIN has already signed agreements with Oracle and Microsoft to build cloud regions in the country.

Cohere focuses on AI models that can be deployed in secure, private environments. That approach has won government clients in North America and Europe. The Saudi deal gives Cohere a direct foothold in the Middle East, where demand for locally controlled compute is rising.

HUMAIN oversees PIF's investments in technology and infrastructure. It was founded in 2021 and has a mandate to grow the kingdom's digital economy. The 50 MW project is its first specifically for AI workloads, rather than general-purpose cloud.

Neither company disclosed the total cost or a target completion date. The partnership is subject to regulatory approvals, they said.

The deal reflects a trend: governments are seeking to host their own AI models rather than rely on foreign cloud providers, Cohere and HUMAIN said. Bloomberg has reported that PIF plans to launch a $40 billion AI fund, though that fund has not been formally announced.

50 MW is enough to power roughly 10,000 high-end GPUs, making it a significant cluster for training frontier models, by industry estimates. Cohere's models, smaller than GPT-4, have been deployed in high-security environments. The project will be built in Saudi Arabia, the companies said, though they did not specify a location.