TMTPOST -- Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD), Cisco Systems, Inc. Saudi Arabian artificial intelligence (AI) company Humain are forming a joint venture to build up to one gigawatt (GW) of AI infrastructure by 2030, with the companies announcing their first major customer has already contracted the entire initial 100-megawatt (MW) capacity.
Credit：Cisco
The yet-to-be-named joint venture, expected to begin operations in 2026, will combine Humain's state-of-the-art data centers with AMD Instinct MI450 Series GPUs and Cisco networking equipment and critical infrastructure, according to a joint statement on Wednesday. The three companies told Reuters that generative video startup Luma AI has contracted to purchase the full 100-megawatt capacity of the first phase deployment in Saudi Arabia.
In the joint venture, AMD and Cisco will serve as minority shareholders and exclusive technology partners, sharing in the profit and loss of the endeavor. Humain, backed by Saudi Arabia's $1 trillion Public Investment Fund (PIF), will take the lead role. AMD Chair and CEO Dr. Lisa Su said the companies "will together really have responsibility for ensuring that it's successful."
The venture aims to deliver modern data center capacity with efficient power usage and lower capital expenditures. The first-phase buildout will be powered entirely by renewable energy and is planned for construction in 2026, according to Humain CEO Tareq Amin. Construction has not yet begun on the various projects.
The joint venture plans to serve a market spanning Asia, Europe, India, the Middle East and Africa, representing roughly 4.5 billion people, Amin said. Cisco will leverage its salesforce to help market capacity in the yet-to-be-built data centers. Cisco Chair and CEO Chuck Robbins said the company has a 25-year history of structuring sales incentives and plans to apply that expertise to help Humain sell its data center capacity.
The announcement of joint venture came on the heels of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman』s first visit to Washington in seven years. with . The crown prince on Tuesday met with U.S. President Donald Trump to discuss chip access and broader AI cooperation. He pledged Saudi Arabia would spend around $50 billion on semiconductors in the short term, emphasizing that "AI is critical for us" to keep the Saudi economy growing. The Kingdom has 「a huge demand of unique computing power」, he told reporters.
Humain, where the Saudi crown prince serves as chairman, officially debuted during Trump's visit to the Middle East in May. Formed by Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, the company has become the centerpiece of the kingdom's effort to capitalize on the AI boom. In October, Saudi Aramco announced it has signed a nonbinding term sheet to take a significant minority stake in Humain.
Humain CEO Amin told Bloomberg last month that the company was waiting for export permits involving chips from Nvidia, AMD, Qualcomm Inc. and California-based chip startup Groq. Semafor reported earlier that Humain was set to announce multi-gigawatt data center projects with companies including AMD, Amazon.com Inc., xAI and GlobalAI.
Humain aims to deploy as many as 400,000 AI chips by 2030, Amin said last month. The company has promised to construct 6.6 gigawatts of computing capacity by 2034, rivaling the size of OpenAI's Stargate joint venture in the U.S. The primary sales pitch to Silicon Valley has been Saudi Arabia's cheap energy to power datacenters.
