RIYADH — Tareq Amin, CEO of HUMAIN, used the stage at the PIF Private Sector Forum 2026 to pull back the curtain on how Saudi Arabia’s national AI company was built and why he believes most global AI initiatives are failing.Rather than deliver a conventional speech about the promise of artificial intelligence, Amin chose to share what he called “behind-the-scenes” lessons from HUMAIN’s first year, lessons shaped by execution, infrastructure, and organizational design.Citing a recent report by the MIT, Amin noted that 90 to 95 percent of generative AI pilots in enterprises are failing.“This is a fact,” he said. “And in my opinion, it is almost never about the technology. It is about mindset and execution.” From pilots to performanceAccording to Amin, enterprises across Saudi Arabia, Japan, India, China and the United States face the same three structural barriers to AI success.First is a lack of clarity around business objectives. Many organizations deploy AI without defining the specific problem they are solving or linking implementation to measurable outcomes such as productivity gains, cost efficiency or revenue growth.Second is poor data readiness. “Garbage in, garbage out,” Amin said, emphasizing the need for unified data platforms capable of supporting AI at scale.Third is isolation. AI cannot operate as a disconnected experiment inside IT departments. It must be embedded directly into workflows and owned by business leaders.“AI is not another technology cycle,” Amin told the audience. “It is a game-changing revolution. But value comes only when you change the narrative from experimentation to execution.” The making of a national AI championHUMAIN, he explained, was formed through the consolidation of AI capabilities and investments under a single national structure, including assets associated with Saudi Aramco and Aramco Digital.The objective was not to build a company serving only domestic demand, but to create a global AI player capable of exporting infrastructure, compute and intelligence.“When we started this company, we had a choice,” Amin said.“We could follow the traditional enterprise path. Or we could completely reinvent the operating model.” HUMAIN chose reinvention. An AI-native enterpriseAt the core of that reinvention is what Amin calls an “AI-native company” an organization designed around the coexistence of AI agents and human employees.Instead of relying on multiple legacy IT systems, HUMAIN built a centralized AI agent orchestration platform.More than 150 AI agents now run different corporate functions, all accessed through a single interface known internally as “HUMAIN One.”Every employee, Amin revealed, operates without traditional desktop applications.“They see one interface,” he said. “Why should you click on icons to execute tasks? You declare your intent.”Through natural language — in Arabic or English — employees can initiate research, manage projects, book travel, or execute administrative tasks.The platform connects AI models directly to business workflows, HR policies, finance systems and external partners. Infrastructure as a strategic advantageBeyond enterprise architecture, Amin detailed HUMAIN’s position across the full AI value chain from infrastructure and compute to frontier models and strategic investments.At the base is HUMAIN Core: gigawatt-scale data center campuses designed not only for domestic capacity but for global AI workloads.“AI is an energy game,” Amin said. “And Saudi Arabia has abundance in power, land, connectivity and water.”He confirmed that global technology companies including Amazon, Nvidia, AMD, Qualcomm and xAI are hosting or committing AI training and inference workloads on infrastructure in the Kingdom.For the first time, he said, Saudi data centers are being built not merely for local demand but to serve global tenants.Amin described this as positioning the Kingdom to become a major exporter of AI compute and tokens, a strategic extension of its energy leadership. Diversified compute and frontier modelsOn the compute side, HUMAIN adopted a diversified chipset strategy rather than relying on a single vendor.The company aligned with AMD, Nvidia and Qualcomm, while also investing early in emerging graphics technologies later acquired by Nvidia.In parallel, HUMAIN’s research teams are building proprietary frontier models designed to understand Saudi culture, language and context rather than relying exclusively on open-source derivatives.“I wanted our science team to learn how difficult it is to build frontier models,” Amin said. “This requires a mindset shift and organizational change.” Turning AI into measurable ROITo demonstrate real-world impact, Amin presented internal case studies.In business travel management, HUMAIN reduced approximately 65 hours of manual coordination and eliminated multiple full-time roles previously required for booking, policy validation and vendor communication.Through HUMAIN One, employees simply declare travel intent, and the system integrates HR policies and travel agency inventories automatically.Payroll management delivered even higher returns. Integrated with Saudi bank APIs and SWIFT systems, the AI platform runs payroll processes, conducts audits and flags variances dynamically.“This is a game changer,” Amin said. “Everything is auditable. Everything is automated.”These examples, he argued, prove that AI must be tightly connected to operational workflows to unlock real economic benefit. Toward a Saudi operating systemAmin revealed that Saudi Arabia is preparing to commercialize its own operating system, becoming the first country outside the United States and China to do so.Unlike traditional operating systems such as Windows or MacOS, the envisioned platform would be AI-native, intent-driven and agent-based.While he did not provide technical details, Amin indicated that further announcements would follow at a major upcoming event.For HUMAIN, the ambition is clear: to move beyond pilots, beyond hype, and beyond incremental upgrades toward a fully redesigned enterprise architecture rooted in AI from infrastructure to interface.“We decided not to take the old path,” Amin said. “We decided to reinvent.”
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