AWS to Open First Saudi Arabia Cloud Region in December 2026

Amazon Web Services said its first cloud infrastructure region in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is on track to launch in December 2026, and that it will make up to 50 megawatts of capacity available in the Kingdom’s first AI Zone by 2028 under an expanded strategic collaboration with HUMAIN, the artificial intelligence company owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. AWS announced the milestones on August 31, 2026, at the LEAP technology conference in Riyadh.

The launch will expand the AWS Global Infrastructure to 40 Regions worldwide. AWS first committed to the Saudi region in March 2024, when it said it planned to invest more than $5.3 billion, approximately 19.88 billion Saudi riyal, in the Kingdom and targeted a 2026 opening. At the time, AWS said the region would consist of three Availability Zones at launch, adding to a network of 105 Availability Zones across 33 geographic regions. AWS Regions are built from Availability Zones that place infrastructure in separate and distinct geographic locations, each with independent power, cooling, and physical security, connected through redundant, ultra-low-latency networks.

Expanded HUMAIN Collaboration

The 50-megawatt commitment extends a partnership the two companies first detailed on May 13, 2025, when AWS and HUMAIN announced plans to invest more than $5 billion in a strategic partnership to build an AI Zone in the Kingdom. That initiative combined dedicated AWS AI infrastructure and servers with semiconductors, UltraCluster networking for AI training and inference, and AWS services including Amazon SageMaker, Amazon Bedrock, and Amazon (AMZN ) Q. HUMAIN described itself at the time as Saudi Arabia’s newly created company responsible for driving AI innovation across the Kingdom and globally.

Under the expanded collaboration, the AI Zone capacity will include AWS’s Trainium chips and the latest NVIDIA (NVDA ) AI infrastructure, which AWS said will let customers run AI training and inference workloads. AWS also described itself as HUMAIN’s preferred AI partner.

Two HUMAIN software products will be distributed through AWS channels under the expanded agreement. HUMAIN’s ALLaM Arabic large language model will be available through Amazon Bedrock, AWS’s fully managed generative AI platform, and HUMAIN Fabric, the AI-native data infrastructure and platform component of the HUMAIN ONE generative AI operating system, will be offered through AWS Marketplace.

AWS said all of its Regions are sovereign-by-design, formalized under the AWS Digital Sovereignty Pledge, its commitment to offering customers advanced sovereignty controls and features in the cloud. With the new Region, developers, startups, and enterprises will have greater choice for running applications and serving end users from data centers located in Saudi Arabia.

“Saudi Arabia is home to some of the most ambitious and inventive builders, from startups and enterprises reimagining industries to public sector organizations deploying AI at scale, and the new AWS Region in the country will help them to continue to innovate,” said Matt Garman, CEO of AWS.

His Excellency Engineer Abdullah Alswaha, Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Communications and Information Technology, said the Kingdom is building the computing power needed for what he called the Intelligence Age, and that the Region launch and expanded HUMAIN partnership will help accelerate AI innovation and advance the goals of Saudi Vision 2030, the Kingdom’s economic diversification program.

Customers and Workforce Programs

AWS said Saudi organizations including Abdul Latif Jameel, Almosafer, stc Group, and Red Bull Mobile, along with AWS Partners ZainTECH, Accenture, and Tamkeen, will run AI workloads on AWS. stc Group, a major digital and telecommunications provider, announced a strategic collaboration with AWS to accelerate adoption of cloud and AI services in Saudi Arabia. ZainTECH, a regional integrated digital solutions provider, signed a multiyear agreement to help organizations adopt AWS solutions and strengthen their security and compliance readiness.

When AWS first announced the region in 2024, it cited Saudi customers already running workloads on its infrastructure, including Almarai, Al Naghi Group, Jahez, Mobily, Red Sea Global, and Seera Holding Group, and noted that eleven higher education institutions in the Kingdom had incorporated AWS Academy courses into their curricula.

Alongside the infrastructure buildout, AWS outlined workforce commitments in the Kingdom. The Amazon Academy, launched with the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, provides free training in cloud computing, AI, logistics, and retail, with a goal of training more than 100,000 Saudi citizens for digital careers. AWS is also training up to 10,000 women through the AWS Saudi Arabia Women’s Skills Initiative at no charge and is establishing two innovation centers in Saudi Arabia to provide technical mentorship and training to startups and entrepreneurs. Across the Middle East, North Africa, and Turkey, AWS said it commits to reaching two million citizens with AI and cloud training by 2030 and has served more than 680,000 individuals to date.

Citing an IDC report it commissioned, AWS said AI will contribute an estimated $130 billion to Saudi Arabia’s economy by 2030. The company framed the new Region and the AI Zone capacity as supporting public and private sector organizations building in line with Vision 2030.