Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Cisco Systems Inc. and Saudi Arabia’s AI startup Humain are forming a joint venture to build data centres in the Middle East and have landed their first customer.
The yet-to-be-named joint venture will kick off with a 100-MW data centre project in Saudi Arabia, which will be used by Gen AI video startup Luma AI, Humain CEO Tareq Amin said. “They will be the first customer of this cluster,” Amin said, adding that Luma has contracted to purchase the entire 100-MW compute capacity.
The joint venture among the companies is a byproduct of a flurry of deals announced when US President Donald Trump visited Riyadh in May, and more collaboration is expected as Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Trump meet in Washington this week. Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund has backed Humain AI and its plans to produce significant data centre buildouts across the country because of abundant, available property and cheap power.
Nvidia Corp. and Qualcomm Inc. also secured agreements in May.
AMD-Cisco-Humain AI deal
AMD had in May said it formed a $10 billion collaboration with Humain AI that included purchases of AMD’s advanced AI chips. In the joint venture, AMD and Cisco are minority shareholders and will share in the profit and loss of the endeavour, the executives said.
Humain AI will take the lead in the JV, AMD CEO Lisa Su said. “We will together really have responsibility for ensuring that it’s successful,” she said.
The companies did not disclose additional financial details.
Saudi Arabia and AI
The joint venture aims to serve a market that includes Asia, Europe, India, the Middle East and Africa, Amin said, with a total market of roughly 4.5 billion people. The plans include building up to 1 GW of new data centres to support the joint venture by 2030.
For the initial buildout of 100 MW, Cisco will provide networking equipment and other infrastructure and AMD will provide its MI450 AI chips. The first stage is planned for construction in 2026 and will use renewable energy only, Amin said. Humain AI is receiving purchase orders for some of the future building as well.
Construction has not yet begun on the various projects, Amin said.
In addition to providing infrastructure equipment, Cisco will also use its sales force to help sell capacity in the yet-to-be-built data centres. Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins said the company has a 25-year history of putting together incentives for its sales teams and plans to use that expertise to help Humain sell its data center capacity.