Humain, the artificial intelligence company owned by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, is seeking to raise an initial $2.5 billion from global and domestic investors for a fund dedicated to data centre development in the kingdom, Bloomberg reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. The vehicle will be managed by BSF Capital, the investment arm of Banque Saudi Fransi, and will be financed through a mix of debt and equity. Proceeds are earmarked for 250 megawatts of capacity that Humain is constructing in partnership with Al Moammar Information Systems Co. That footprint could eventually expand to as much as one gigawatt, according to the same people. The investors being approached have not been identified, and the split between debt and equity has not been disclosed.
The fundraising follows remarks by Humain Chief Executive Tareq Amin earlier in the week, when he confirmed plans to establish a fund but withheld details on its size. BSF Capital will approach investors only after securing approval from Saudi Arabia's Capital Market Authority, a process expected to take between two and three months. The timing places the vehicle alongside a cluster of announcements made during the LEAP 2026 technology conference in Riyadh, where Humain disclosed partnerships covering data centre construction, autonomous vehicle deployment and enterprise AI infrastructure.
A LAYERED FINANCING STACK
The proposed fund adds a further layer to a financing structure Humain has assembled since its launch by the Public Investment Fund in May 2025. The company has secured a $3 billion partnership with Blackstone to fund data centre deals, and in January 2026 agreed a $1.2 billion framework with Saudi Arabia's National Infrastructure Fund covering 250 megawatts of capacity. Goldman Sachs has been advising on a separate financing package spanning both data centres and graphics processing unit procurement. The company has announced plans for six gigawatts of AI data centre capacity in the kingdom by 2034 and has obtained a 16 gigawatt power commitment from the Saudi Ministry of Energy.
Amin has attributed the pace of debt raising to the quality of the company's counterparties. Demand from global hyperscalers has allowed Humain to borrow against offtake agreements with large technology firms, he told Semafor. "We've been able to accelerate raising debt for HUMAIN because all of these offtakes are bankable," Amin said. He added that Humain's compute is roughly 30 per cent cheaper for customers than comparable capacity elsewhere, a cost position that has sustained demand even as other Saudi projects scale back spending.
CAPACITY BUILDOUT AND RISK
The fund arrives days after Humain and DataVolt broke ground on the first 100 megawatts of a data centre at Oxagon, the industrial district of NEOM on the Red Sea coast. That tranche forms part of a 360 megawatt first phase within a campus master-planned to reach 1.5 gigawatts, with initial capacity expected to become available in 2028. Humain separately announced a partnership with San Francisco-based Together AI at LEAP 2026 targeting an additional 250 megawatt facility, and a joint venture with AMD and Cisco aiming at one gigawatt of capacity by 2030. In October 2025, Humain agreed non-binding terms for Saudi Aramco to acquire a minority stake, with the Public Investment Fund retaining majority ownership.
Execution now depends on regulatory clearance and investor appetite, neither of which has been settled. Security has also become a live consideration: Amin said Humain is "hardening" defences around its facilities following the US-Iran war, which has seen AI infrastructure attacked elsewhere in the Gulf, and described the sites as distributed across the country and treated as critical national infrastructure. At $2.5 billion, the vehicle sits at the smaller end of announced Gulf AI commitments, representing incremental capacity rather than a structural shift in global data centre supply. The next markers will be the Capital Market Authority decision and the identity of the anchor investors BSF Capital secures.