Saudi Arabia's Humain picks Goldman Sachs to advise on data centre financing, sources say

By Federico Maccioni

DUBAI, May 19 (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia-backed artificial intelligence company Humain has picked Goldman Sachs to advise on a financing package to build data centres in the kingdom that ‌could be worth at least 20 billion riyals, two sources with knowledge of the matter ‌told Reuters, as the firm races to expand capacity amid a regional AI push.

The move illustrates how Saudi Arabia, like Gulf neighbours ​Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, is accelerating its AI build-out to capitalise on surging global demand for computing power.

The country is also banking on cheap energy to power data centres - a powerful lure for hyperscalers such as Google, Microsoft and Meta that are driving AI adoption.

Humain hired the U.S. bank recently as it seeks to ‌fund data centres and GPU chips ⁠for 2 gigawatts (GW) of capacity, around a third of its target by 2034, the sources said, requesting anonymity as the matter is not public.

The investment could require financing ⁠of at least 20 billion riyals ($5.33 billion), the two sources said.

The data centres will be developed in the Riyadh area, according to one of the sources.

Humain and Goldman Sachs declined to comment. The Public Investment Fund (PIF), which owns ​Humain, referred ​Reuters' queries to the AI company.

Saudi Arabia, the world's ​top oil exporter, is seeking to diversify away ‌from hydrocarbon revenue by investing tens of billions of dollars in infrastructure, transportation, tourism and technology, including AI.

DIVERSIFYING TOWARDS AI

The move comes even as the Iran war has sparked uncertainty about local investments after data centres belonging to Amazon cloud unit AWS were hit by Iranian drone strikes in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.

AWS is investing billions of dollars in Saudi Arabia and has teamed up with Humain to build ‌a new "AI zone" in the kingdom.

The International Energy Agency estimates ​a global cumulative investment in data centres of $3.9 trillion between 2026 ​and 2030, a sum that is "too large ​to be funded solely from the balance sheets of AI companies," it said in ‌a report last month.

The PIF, which has been ​spearheading the transformation in Saudi, ​recently retooled its strategy, moving away from some investments, including scaling back so-called giga-projects in the kingdom.

The PIF, which has been spearheading Saudi Arabia's economic transformation, recently retooled its strategy, scaling back ​some giga-projects in the kingdom.

Established last ‌year, Humain has secured several agreements including deals with xAI, in which it is a ​minority shareholder, and Blackstone-backed AirTrunk for data centre projects in the country.