Elon Musk's xAI and Nvidia joined Saudi Arabia's large-scale AI infrastructure expansion by building a 500-megawatt (MW) data center and moving to establish a supercomputer. Cooperation appears to be accelerating on the occasion of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's visit to the United States.
The two companies' CEOs, Musk and Jensen Huang, officially announced the plan on the 19th (local time) during a conversation with Abdullah Al-Swaha, Saudi Minister of Communications and Information Technology, at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. The project will be pursued with Humane, an AI corporations supported by Saudi sovereign wealth funds, starting with a 50 MW first phase and gradually expanding to 500 MW.
Humane signed a contract in May, shortly after its founding, to purchase 18,000 GB300 chips based on the Blackwell architecture from Nvidia. CEO Huang said cooperation with Humane is proceeding smoothly, noting that "a Start - Up with little revenue has been tasked with Musk's large-scale data center." There was also a moment when Musk misspoke during the announcement, saying the data was 500 GW and then correcting himself.
Humane is also pursuing a plan with Amazon Web Services to build a $5 billion "AI zone," and Minister Al-Swaha said the project is starting at 100 MW and expanding to the GW level.
Nvidia will also work with Humane to build a supercomputer for quantum computer simulations. The equipment is expected to be used to correct errors that occur when robots learn in physics-based simulation environments.
AMD and Cisco were also reported to plan to establish an AI joint venture with Humane to build a 100 MW data center. The joint venture has reportedly secured AI video generation Start - Up LumaAI as an initial customer.
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump and Crown Prince bin Salman signed a memorandum of understanding at the White House the previous day allowing Saudi access to U.S. AI technology.