Amazon Web Services is expanding its global cloud footprint with plans to launch its first infrastructure region in Saudi Arabia. Backed by a $5.3 billion investment, the facility will deliver dedicated compute capacity alongside specialized hardware like AWS Trainium and NVIDIA AI silicon. The expansion gives regional organizations direct access to local data centers while keeping workloads aligned with national data sovereignty standards.
Amazon Web Services shared the details during the LEAP conference in Riyadh. As part of the project, AWS is working directly with HUMAIN, a technology company owned by the Public Investment Fund, to bring 50MW of power into the country first specialized AI Zone by 2028. The site will house compute clusters running proprietary AWS Trainium chips alongside current NVIDIA hardware. This setup lets regional companies run heavy model training and inference locally instead of routing data through foreign servers. This launch expands the global footprint of the company to 40 distinct regions worldwide.
Matt Garman, the Chief Executive Officer of AWS, highlighted the operational goals of the investment during the event.
The launch of our new Region and our partnership with HUMAIN will deliver the full stack cloud and AI infrastructure to help power new industries, create jobs, and accelerate the goals of Vision 2030.
Software tools will arrive alongside the physical infrastructure. HUMAIN will make its ALLAM Arabic language model available directly through Amazon Bedrock. This gives regional developers a native tool for generative text tasks without building massive foundational models from scratch. The HUMAIN Fabric data management platform will also sell through the AWS Marketplace to help businesses organize proprietary datasets.
Major local enterprises are already preparing to move workloads to the new setup. Telecom operator stc Group signed an agreement to speed up cloud adoption across its network. Regional solutions provider ZainTECH finalized a multiyear deal focusing on cloud security and regulatory compliance. Consumer brands like Abdul Latif Jameel, Red Bull Mobile, and travel company Almosafer will also move their core digital systems to the local infrastructure.
Amazon is funding local education programs to support the expansion. The company partnered with the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology to run the Amazon Academy. The program provides free technical education in cloud systems and logistics, targeting over 100,000 citizens. A dedicated initiative also aims to train 10,000 women in technical roles at no cost.
Educational outreach includes partnerships with 11 higher education institutions across the country. Two new innovation hubs will open locally to mentor startup founders and software engineers. Across the wider Middle East, North Africa, and Turkey, the broader goal is to reach 2,000,000 individuals with cloud and AI training by 2030, with over 680,000 learners already completing coursework.
