Amazon Web Services (AWS) said its first cloud infrastructure region in Saudi Arabia is on track to launch in December 2026. The new region will allow developers, enterprises and public sector organisations to run applications and serve users from AWS infrastructure located in Saudi Arabia.

AWS said the project is backed by a planned investment of $5.3 billion and will use a sovereign-by-design approach, giving customers greater control over where their data and workloads are hosted. The Saudi region was first announced in 2024 and will become part of AWS’s global infrastructure network.

AWS is also expanding its partnership with Saudi Public Investment Fund-owned company HUMAIN, with plans to provide up to 50MW of capacity in the Kingdom’s first AI Zone by 2028. The infrastructure will use AWS Trainium chips and NVIDIA systems for AI model training and inference.

Arabic large language model

HUMAIN’s ALLAM Arabic large language model will be made available through Amazon Bedrock, while its HUMAIN Fabric AI-native data platform will be offered through AWS Marketplace.

AWS said the new region will serve existing customers and partners in the Kingdom.

Matt Garman, CEO of AWS, said: “AWS is committed to helping organisations of all sizes in Saudi Arabia innovate and grow with access to the world’s leading cloud technologies.”