Cisco Systems, Advanced Micro Devices, and Saudi Arabia’s Humain are teaming up to build data centers in the Middle East. CEOs of the two companies told Reuters on Tuesday that the joint venture has already landed its first customer.
Humain CEO Tareq Amin said that the joint venture — which is yet to be named — will kick off with a 100-megawatt (MW) data center project in Saudi Arabia. The computing capacity of the data center will be supplied by generative video startup Luma AI, contracted by Humain.
“They will be the first customer of this cluster,” Amin said, adding that Luma has contracted to purchase the entire 100MW capacity.
The joint venture is among the deals that took place following President Donald Trump’s visit to Riyadh in May. More collaboration is expected as Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Trump meet in Washington this week.
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Humain is backed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), and plans to offer AI services and products, including data centers, AI infrastructure, cloud capabilities and advanced AI models, according to the state news agency.
In May, AMD said it formed a $10 billion collaboration with Humain that included purchases of AMD’s advanced AI chips. The executives said that AMD and Cisco are minority stakeholders, and will share in the profit and loss of the endeavor.
AMD CEO Lisa Su said that Humain will take the lead. “Together with HUMAIN and Cisco, we’re combining leadership compute and networking technologies to expand the capacity and global competitiveness of the Kingdom’s AI ecosystem. As part of this deepening collaboration, we’re also establishing an AMD Center of Excellence in Saudi Arabia to further accelerate local integration and innovation,” she added.
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Chuck Robbins, chair and CEO of Cisco said “Our expanded partnership with HUMAIN, together with AMD, will mark a pivotal moment in accelerating Saudi Arabia’s AI infrastructure. By providing secure, scalable, critical infrastructure for HUMAIN’s up to 1 GW buildout, Cisco will help the Kingdom turn its vision for a digitally advanced, AI-powered economy into a reality.”
Additional financial details were not disclosed. Amin said the joint venture aims to serve a market that includes Asia, Europe, India, the Middle East and Africa. The plans include building up to one gigawatt of new data centers to support the joint venture by 2030.
For the initial buildout of 100MW, Cisco will provide the networking equipment and other infrastructure and AMD will provide its MI450 AI chips. Amin said that the first stage is planned for construction in 2026, and will entirely use renewable energy. Humain is also receiving purchase orders for some of the future building.
In addition to providing infrastructure equipment, Cisco will also use its salesforce to help sell capacity in the yet-to-be-built data centers.