AWS sets launch date for its cloud region in Saudi Arabia: local infrastructure and integration with the Alam model
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Amazon Web Services announced at the LEAP tech conference in Riyadh that it will launch its first cloud infrastructure region inside the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in December 2026. This move coincides with an expansion of its strategic partnership with Haymene, owned by the Public Investment Fund, to provide advanced computing capabilities that support digital sovereignty requirements and broaden the scope of artificial-intelligence services in the region.
The project represents a planned investment exceeding $5.3 billion, roughly 19.88 billion Saudi riyals, and it was initially announced in March 2024. With the operation of this new region, AWS’s global infrastructure network will grow to 40 regions worldwide, giving developers, companies and government entities the ability to run their applications and process data locally from data centres located within the Kingdom’s borders.
The expansion plan goes beyond traditional server hosting to target the creation of a computing environment dedicated to generative AI workloads and intensive training.Under the partnership with Haymene, the two parties plan to provide 50 megawatts of compute capacity in the first AI region in Saudi Arabia by 2028. The system will rely on AWS-developed Trainium chips together with advanced NVIDIA systems to serve both training and inference workloads.
On the software side, the partnership includes making the large Arabic language model “‘Alam’” from Haymene available via the Amazon Bedrock generative-AI platform. The Haymene Fabric platform, the AI data infrastructure and part of the “Haymene One” operating system, will also be purchasable and usable directly through the AWS Marketplace.
Matt Garman, CEO of AWS, affirmed that the new region and the partnership with Haymene will deliver an integrated computing and AI infrastructure to accelerate Vision 2030 objectives, while Engineer Abdullah Al-Suwaha, Minister of Communications and Information Technology, noted that the Kingdom is building the computing capacity needed for the AI era and strengthening its position as a global cloud partner. This follows an IDC report commissioned by AWS estimating that AI will contribute about $130 billion to the Saudi economy by 2030.
This launch creates a new operational reality for technology, banking and government institutions across the Gulf region.The presence of local data centres by the end of 2026 removes stringent regulatory obstacles related to retaining and localising sensitive data, allowing engineering teams to build AI solutions without transferring data across borders. Providing the ‘Alam’ model on a managed platform also reduces the cost of managing Arabic language-model infrastructure and gives developers easier access to integrate Arabic-adapted tools into their daily applications.