Saudi Arabia's Humain retained Goldman Sachs to advise on data center financing, preparing for major capital raise.

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, according to two sources with knowledge of the matter. The move reflects how Saudi Arabia, like Gulf neighbours Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, is accelerating its AI infrastructure build-out to capitalise on surging global demand for computing power.

Humain hired the U.S. bank to fund data centres and GPU chips for 2 gigawatts (GW) of capacity—around a third of its target by 2034. The financing requirement is estimated at least 20 billion riyals ($5.33 billion). The data centres will be developed in the Riyadh area.

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

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

The investment push comes amid regional uncertainty following Iranian drone strikes on data centres belonging to Amazon's cloud unit AWS in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. AWS is investing billions of dollars in Saudi Arabia and has partnered with Humain to build a new "AI zone" in the kingdom.

According to the International Energy Agency, global cumulative investment in data centres is estimated at $3.9 trillion between 2026 and 2030—a sum that is "too large to be funded solely from the balance sheets of AI companies." The PIF, which has been spearheading Saudi Arabia's economic transformation, recently scaled back certain giga-projects in the kingdom as part of a strategic retooling.

Established last year, Humain has already 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.