Humain’s getting a big cash infusion from the Saudi National Infrastructure Fund

Humain just got another big check from the state. The National Infrastructure Fund (Infra) will provide the PIF-owned AI company with up to SAR 2.5 bn (USD 667 mn) in financing, according to a press release. The money will pay for AI chips and the power lines to run them.

This is the second time in about a week that a government-owned body has backed the Kingdom’s AI champion. Earlier this month, state oil giant Aramco paid USD 2.6 bn for 49% of the company.

Here’s where the money goes:

• Up to SAR 1.1 bn (USD 293 mn) for GPUs, the powerful chips that run AI. That’s enough chips to use about 25 MW of electricity.
• Up to SAR 1.4 bn (USD 373 mn) to connect Humain’s data centers to the power grid. That could eventually power up to 1 GW of data centers, 40 times what the new chips will use.

Why so much for power lines? Electricity is a big headache for anyone building data centers. More than half of industry players say power is a major obstacle to getting projects done, according to a survey by the consultancy Turner & Townsend released last month. Across MENA+, the bottleneck in power is more frequently transmission infrastructure than it is generation capacity. In Saudi, the emphasis has been on substations, transmission infrastructure, and grid connections needed to bring future sites online (pdf).

BACKGROUND- These are the first deals under Infra’s AI data center financing program. They build on a non-binding agreement for up to SAR 4.5 bn (USD 1.2 bn) that Infra and Humain announced at Davos in January.

The plan: Infra says it wants to get data center projects off the ground to prove their investment potential to private interests like big cloud companies and major investors. Humain plans to build 3 GW of AI data centers by 2030.

The catch: Humain is entirely state-owned so far. PIF owns 51% of the company and Aramco owns the other 49%. One reading of the Aramco agreement is that Humain may be struggling to attract private investors, as we noted last week.