Horizon Ultra computer from Human and Qualcomm moves smart agent processing from the cloud to device hardware
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The Saudi company “Human”, owned by the Public Investment Fund, in partnership with the American chip-design firm “Qualcomm”, unveiled a new personal computer called “Horizon Ultra” that runs autonomous AI agents directly on the device. Announced at the LEAP tech conference in Riyadh, the product introduces the concept of an “agent-based AI computer”, replacing the traditional UI that relies on switching between separate apps with an intent-driven model: the user sets a goal and embedded agents carry out a chain of complex tasks, learning the user’s preferences over time.
The new device is based on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X2 Elite platform and delivers up to 80 trillion AI operations per second, with a battery lasting up to 22 hours of use.The core bet of this architecture is moving inference to the edge rather than relying exclusively on remote data centers.This enables local model execution for tasks such as travel scheduling, presentation preparation, and financial management. According to Tarek Amin, CEO of Human, the personal computer becomes a fully integrated intelligence platform that makes AI an intrinsic capability of the hardware rather than merely a cloud service the device connects to.
Development of the device took more than a year by joint engineering teams that worked on hardware, software and industrial design, and it is slated for enterprise customers on September 20, with plans to make it available to consumers later. The first version runs Windows, while Human aims to launch its own operating system by 2027. This direction aligns with Qualcomm’s expansion of its “hybrid AI” model, which distributes computing workloads between edge devices and massive cloud data centers that require hundreds of megawatts, described by Wasi Harbaji, Qualcomm’s president for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, as a connected computing chain extending from phones and cars to data centers.
The cooperation is not limited to desktop hardware; the partnership has also expanded to include data-center infrastructure in Saudi Arabia, where Adobe is shifting regional data processing and labeling workloads to Human servers equipped with Qualcomm accelerators, becoming the first global software company to move AI operations directly onto Human’s local platform. The system is supported by engineering offices that Qualcomm established in the Majdoul Tower in Riyadh, staffed by Saudi engineers working alongside counterparts from the United States, Europe and India, alongside Qualcomm’s digital partnership with Saudi Aramco to develop AI solutions for the energy and manufacturing sectors.
The shift toward distributed computing forces technology leaders in Gulf and Arab enterprises to fundamentally reassess the viability of cloud architectures.Running agent-driven AI models directly on desktop hardware reduces the cumulative inference cost associated with cloud API calls and resolves the challenge of complying with data-privacy requirements for financial and governmental sectors by keeping data within the device rather than sending it to external servers. At the same time, software development teams in the region are compelled to shift from building separate applications to creating services that align with intent-based operating systems and the autonomous interaction of agents.