Saudi Arabia has begun operating new AI computing infrastructure powered by AMD chips and Cisco networking equipment as the kingdom moves from announcing massive AI ambitions to putting some of that capacity into production.
AMD, Cisco and Saudi AI company HUMAIN announced that a system using AMD Instinct MI355X GPUs and EPYC CPUs connected through Cisco’s Silicon One networking is now operating and serving customers in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere.
HUMAIN, which is owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, is offering the capacity as a GPU-as-a-service platform that can be used for both AI model training and inference.
The current deployment is only the beginning of a much larger planned buildout.
AMD, Cisco and HUMAIN plan to begin deploying as much as 250 megawatts of additional AI infrastructure in 2027, with capacity expected to begin coming online during the second half of the year. The companies say their joint venture remains on track to deploy as much as 1 gigawatt by 2030.
The project is significant for AMD as it tries to establish its Instinct accelerators as a viable alternative to Nvidia GPUs in large AI installations. Nvidia currently dominates the market for the processors used to train and run advanced AI models.
It also provides another example of sovereign AI infrastructure moving beyond government announcements and planned investments into operating computing capacity.
Saudi Arabia has been investing heavily to establish itself as a global AI hub, including through partnerships with U.S. technology companies.