Gulf AI Giants Turn to Wall Street as Chips, Capital and Security Tighten

WASHINGTON — Saudi Arabia’s Humain is preparing for an initial public offering as state-backed artificial intelligence champions across the Persian Gulf reconsider how they finance their expansion and structure their ownership. Humain Chief Executive Officer Tareq Amin said he is assembling a team to prepare for a dual listing in Riyadh and New York by 2029.

The planned IPO would be a major change for a company almost entirely funded by state capital since its creation. Saudi Arabia’s $900 billion Public Investment Fund (PIF) established Humain in May 2025 to serve as the main engine of the kingdom’s national AI strategy. The company has since formed partnerships with Nvidia, xAI, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Adobe, and Cisco.

Humain is also seeking a $2.5 billion fund from global and local investors to finance a new phase of data center expansion across Saudi Arabia. The PIF, chaired by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, is under heavy financial pressure as it supports domestic gigaprojects including the $500 billion futuristic city NEOM.

That pressure is encouraging portfolio companies to become self-sustaining and reduce their dependence on the sovereign fund. “This is a funding-discipline decision as much as a monetization one, at a point when PIF has been explicit that portfolio companies must reduce their draw on the sovereign,” said Kurt Davis Jr., head of debt and capital advisory for the Middle East and Africa at professional services firm Alvarez & Marsal.

Humain’s timetable still presents structural challenges. “A listing gives permanent capital, audited disclosure, and a public credit story that lowers the cost of the debt behind the build-out,” Davis said. “The difficulty is sequencing: a 2029 listing puts the company in front of public investors mid-construction, with most of its capex still ahead of it.”

The search for outside financing is also tied to Washington’s tightening control over advanced semiconductor exports. In late 2023, the U.S. Department of Commerce expanded licensing requirements for advanced chip exports to several Middle Eastern countries as the U.S. government sought to prevent sophisticated semiconductors from reaching geopolitical rivals, particularly China. Gulf AI firms are finding that sovereign funding alone cannot guarantee access to the proprietary chips and software needed for next-generation computing infrastructure.

Abu Dhabi’s G42, backed by the United Arab Emirates’ sovereign wealth fund Mubadala, has reportedly held preliminary talks with U.S. companies about selling a majority stake. The possible transaction would help secure long-term access to advanced chips. G42’s relationship with Washington was reinforced by Microsoft’s $1.5 billion investment in 2024, a deal negotiated in coordination with the U.S. government and requiring G42 to remove Chinese hardware, including telecommunications equipment from Huawei.

After those structural changes, the UAE received an “A:5” export control designation from the U.S. The designation allows UAE-based companies to buy advanced AI chips without individual export licenses until 2027, provided their corporate structures remain unchanged. Saudi Arabia does not currently have the A:5 designation.

“Beyond the question of capital, the story could be read through the lens of export controls,” said Mohammed Soliman, director of AI and compute infrastructure at McLarty Associates. “Both G42 and Humain want to stay within the American AI ecosystem. Outside capital and a possible American majority are how they keep this valuable access.”

Soliman said that bringing in Western institutional investors and pursuing a New York listing is part of Riyadh’s effort to prepare Humain for a “G42-style arrangement with Washington,” while also financing the company’s massive capital expenditures. The broader shift moves Gulf AI companies away from sole reliance on sovereign wealth and toward Western capital markets and corporate partnerships as they seek U.S. technology amid escalating regional security threats.

Humain’s physical ambitions are substantial. It plans to build 1.9 gigawatts (GW) of AI computing capacity across Saudi Arabia by 2030 and expand beyond 6 GW by 2034. To generate demand for that capacity, the company is launching an investment vehicle called Humain Limitless and expects to deploy a global AI venture capital fund at a scale larger than the $10 billion first outlined last year by the end of 2026.

Amin has said the company will back only businesses that agree either to move part of their computing workloads to Saudi data centers or to establish a physical workforce in the kingdom. “They’re positioning it very simply: take the money, put compute in the kingdom, or bring talent,” Soliman said. “I call it industrial policy in a venture wrapper to pull demand onto Saudi compute, then grow companies on top of that.”

Saudi Arabia’s data center capacity rose sevenfold from 68 megawatts (MW) in 2021 to 467 MW in the first quarter of 2026, according to official data. Investments exceeding SR56.2 billion ($14.98 billion) drove the expansion, although the domestic market remains significantly underpenetrated.

An Alvarez & Marsal report found that Saudi Arabia has 12 watts of data center capacity per capita, compared with roughly 50 watts per capita in both the UAE and the United States. Delivering approximately half of Humain’s announced capacity and closing that gap will require as much as $42 billion in project capital by 2030, including an estimated $32 billion in debt.

Demand is expected to come from a cloud-first public-sector mandate linked to data sovereignty laws, global hyperscalers choosing to lease rather than build local facilities, and the power demands of AI training, which favor the energy-rich kingdom. Humain executives insist that construction timelines remain on schedule despite regional instability.

Physical security has nevertheless become a concern for global technology companies operating in the Gulf. In early March, two AWS data centers in the UAE were struck by drone attacks, while a third facility in Bahrain was damaged by a nearby drone strike. The attacks were the first time military operations directly targeted the infrastructure of a major Western cloud provider in the region.

AWS responded by rerouting computing workloads to other global hubs and warned that restoring the damaged physical sites would be a prolonged process. The strikes highlighted the vulnerability of concentrated digital hubs as Humain and Saudi Arabia seek the tens of billions of dollars required to build a world-class AI ecosystem and persuade international investors, hyperscalers, and Washington regulators that the kingdom is a safe, stable, and compliant home for sensitive technology.