Saudi Arabia's Infra and HUMAIN sign $667m in deals to power AI data centres
Saudi Arabia has put SAR2.5 billion ($667 million) of financing behind its AI build-out, with the National Infrastructure Fund (Infra) and HUMAIN, a Public Investment Fund company, signing two agreements to fund computing hardware and the power lines that feed it.
The first facility, of up to SAR1.1 billion ($293.3 million), will pay for the procurement and deployment of graphics processing units representing roughly 25 MW of IT load. A second, of up to SAR1.4 billion ($373.3 million), will finance substations, transmission infrastructure and grid connections for HUMAIN's AI data centres.
The deals are the first transactions announced under Infra's AI Data Center Financing Program and build on a framework the two signed at Davos in January 2026, which set out non-binding terms of up to SAR4.5 billion ($1.2 billion) for AI and digital infrastructure in the kingdom.
Eng. Esmail bin Mohammed Alsallom, Infra's chief executive, said the aim was to draw in investment beyond the fund's own commitment. "Our role is to strengthen project readiness and bankability, with commercial viability and economic value guiding how we deploy our capital," he said, adding that the partnership is meant to build "a financing market that can attract a broader pool of private and institutional capital".
The planned power infrastructure is designed to support future data centre development of up to 1 GW of IT capacity. Tareq Amin, HUMAIN's chief executive, said the facilities would "help accelerate the deployment of advanced computing capacity and the power infrastructure required to support it". The agreements were signed in the presence of Yasir Al-Rumayyan, governor of the Public Investment Fund, and Faisal bin Fadhil Alibrahim, minister of economy and planning and chairman of Infra's board.
What it means for Pakistan: The deals show Gulf sovereign capital moving into AI computing and the power behind it, a template Pakistani policymakers have been studying as they court Gulf investment in data centres and digital infrastructure. For Pakistan, the gap the Saudi model addresses is financing: state-backed funds underwriting project readiness so private and institutional capital follows. Pakistan's own IT and data centre ambitions, and the foreign exchange needed to import GPUs and grid equipment, depend on similar blended finance rather than on state budgets alone.
