RIYADH — Tareq Amin, CEO of HUMAIN, used the stage on the PIF Non-public Sector Discussion board 2026 to tug again the curtain on how Saudi Arabia’s nationwide AI firm was constructed and why he believes most world AI initiatives are failing.
Reasonably than ship a standard speech concerning the promise of synthetic intelligence, Amin selected to share what he known as “behind-the-scenes” classes from HUMAIN’s first yr, classes formed by execution, infrastructure, and organizational design.
Citing a current report by the MIT, Amin famous that 90 to 95 % of generative AI pilots in enterprises are failing.
“It is a truth,” he mentioned. “And in my view, it’s nearly by no means concerning the expertise. It’s about mindset and execution.”
From pilots to efficiency
Based on Amin, enterprises throughout Saudi Arabia, Japan, India, China and the USA face the identical three structural obstacles to AI success.
First is an absence of readability round enterprise targets. Many organizations deploy AI with out defining the precise downside they’re fixing or linking implementation to measurable outcomes akin to productiveness beneficial properties, value effectivity or income progress.
Second is poor information readiness. “Rubbish in, rubbish out,” Amin mentioned, emphasizing the necessity for unified information platforms able to supporting AI at scale.
Third is isolation. AI can’t function as a disconnected experiment inside IT departments. It have to be embedded immediately into workflows and owned by enterprise leaders.
“AI is just not one other expertise cycle,” Amin instructed the viewers. “It’s a game-changing revolution. However worth comes solely while you change the narrative from experimentation to execution.”
The making of a nationwide AI champion
HUMAIN, he defined, was fashioned by the consolidation of AI capabilities and investments below a single nationwide construction, together with belongings related to Saudi Aramco and Aramco Digital.
The target was to not construct an organization serving solely home demand, however to create a world AI participant able to exporting infrastructure, compute and intelligence.
“Once we began this firm, we had a selection,” Amin mentioned.
“We may comply with the normal enterprise path. Or we may utterly reinvent the working mannequin.” HUMAIN selected reinvention.
An AI-native enterprise
On the core of that reinvention is what Amin calls an “AI-native firm” a company designed across the coexistence of AI brokers and human workers.
As a substitute of counting on a number of legacy IT methods, HUMAIN constructed a centralized AI agent orchestration platform.
Greater than 150 AI brokers now run completely different company features, all accessed by a single interface recognized internally as “HUMAIN One.”
Each worker, Amin revealed, operates with out conventional desktop functions.
“They see one interface,” he mentioned. “Why must you click on on icons to execute duties? You declare your intent.”
By way of pure language — in Arabic or English — workers can provoke analysis, handle initiatives, e book journey, or execute administrative duties.
The platform connects AI fashions on to enterprise workflows, HR insurance policies, finance methods and exterior companions.
Infrastructure as a strategic benefit
Past enterprise structure, Amin detailed HUMAIN’s place throughout the total AI worth chain from infrastructure and compute to frontier fashions and strategic investments.
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On the base is HUMAIN Core: gigawatt-scale information middle campuses designed not just for home capability however for world AI workloads.
“AI is an power sport,” Amin mentioned. “And Saudi Arabia has abundance in energy, land, connectivity and water.”
He confirmed that world expertise corporations together with Amazon, Nvidia, AMD, Qualcomm and xAI are internet hosting or committing AI coaching and inference workloads on infrastructure within the Kingdom.
For the primary time, he mentioned, Saudi information facilities are being constructed not merely for native demand however to serve world tenants.
Amin described this as positioning the Kingdom to change into a serious exporter of AI compute and tokens, a strategic extension of its power management.
Diversified compute and frontier fashions
On the compute aspect, HUMAIN adopted a diversified chipset technique quite than counting on a single vendor.
The corporate aligned with AMD, Nvidia and Qualcomm, whereas additionally investing early in rising graphics applied sciences later acquired by Nvidia.
In parallel, HUMAIN’s analysis groups are constructing proprietary frontier fashions designed to know Saudi tradition, language and context quite than relying completely on open-source derivatives.
“I wished our science crew to find out how troublesome it’s to construct frontier fashions,” Amin mentioned. “This requires a mindset shift and organizational change.”
Turning AI into measurable ROI
To exhibit real-world impression, Amin offered inner case research.
In enterprise journey administration, HUMAIN diminished roughly 65 hours of guide coordination and eradicated a number of full-time roles beforehand required for reserving, coverage validation and vendor communication.
By way of HUMAIN One, workers merely declare journey intent, and the system integrates HR insurance policies and journey company inventories mechanically.
Payroll administration delivered even larger returns. Built-in with Saudi financial institution APIs and SWIFT methods, the AI platform runs payroll processes, conducts audits and flags variances dynamically.
“It is a sport changer,” Amin mentioned. “All the things is auditable. All the things is automated.”
These examples, he argued, show that AI have to be tightly related to operational workflows to unlock actual financial profit.
Towards a Saudi working system
Amin revealed that Saudi Arabia is making ready to commercialize its personal working system, turning into the primary nation exterior the USA and China to take action.
In contrast to conventional working methods akin to Home windows or MacOS, the envisioned platform can be AI-native, intent-driven and agent-based.
Whereas he didn’t present technical particulars, Amin indicated that additional bulletins would comply with at a serious upcoming occasion.
For HUMAIN, the ambition is evident: to maneuver past pilots, past hype, and past incremental upgrades towards a totally redesigned enterprise structure rooted in AI from infrastructure to interface.
“We determined to not take the outdated path,” Amin mentioned. “We determined to reinvent.”
