News

Saudi Arabia’s $5B AI Zone To Spark Tech Jobs & Global Innovation

Backed by HUMAIN and AWS, the new AI Zone aims to train 100,000 Saudis, boost GenAI innovation, and drive a surge in tech job creation.

Published

1 year ago

May 15, 2025

Joanna Melki

saudi arabia's $5 billion ai zone to spark tech jobs and global innovation

Amazon

Saudi Arabia is doubling down on its ambition to become an AI-first economy with the launch of a dedicated “AI Zone”, a multibillion-dollar initiative designed to accelerate tech job creation, digital innovation, and startup growth.

At the heart of the project is a $5 billion+ investment from HUMAIN — the Kingdom’s new AI champion under the Public Investment Fund (PIF) — and Amazon Web Services (AWS). The collaboration marks one of the largest tech capacity-building efforts in the region and promises to transform Saudi Arabia’s digital landscape.

A central pillar of the initiative is training 100,000 Saudi citizens in cloud computing and generative AI, through Amazon Academy — described as the Middle East’s largest talent development program. The initiative aims to close the talent gap in AI and give Saudi nationals a foothold in one of the fastest-growing global tech sectors.

The AI Zone will also give Saudi businesses and government entities access to high-performance AI models through AWS. Companies will benefit from Amazon Q, an AI-powered coding assistant that can build GenAI agents to automate workflows, generate content, and deliver insights.

“This collaboration to build an AI Zone in Saudi Arabia will enable innovations across all industries using AWS’s advanced AI offerings,” said Matt Garman, CEO of Amazon Web Services.

Alongside talent development and enterprise AI, the initiative is expected to invigorate the local startup ecosystem. Saudi Arabia led the MENA region in VC investment in 2024, with $750 million raised — a signal of growing appetite for innovation.

Also Read: HUMAIN & NVIDIA Partner To Build Saudi AI Factories Of The Future

The new zone will give startups access to AWS’s cloud stack and specialized AI support, helping them scale faster and innovate with confidence.

“This could be the spark the Saudi tech startup scene has needed,” said a regional consultant. “The AI Zone fills a gap in how tech jobs are created and supported”.

As the project’s architect, HUMAIN plans to use AWS tools to develop sovereign AI solutions and Arabic-focused LLMs like ALLaM. It also intends to launch a unified AI agent marketplace, simplifying how government and enterprise customers discover and deploy AI tools.

“Together with AWS, we’re creating the infrastructure, capability, and community to power the Kingdom’s AI-driven future,” said Tareq Amin, CEO of HUMAIN.

Related Topics:Amazon Artificial Intelligence HUMAIN Saudi Arabia

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News

Visa’s Return To Syria Starts With A Test And A Bank In Lebanon

Foreign visitors will be the first users to benefit, but whether Syria’s own banks and cardholders follow is still an open question.

Published

2 days ago

August 27, 2026

Dana Saadeh

visa's return to syria starts with a test and a bank in lebanon

Visa is returning to Syria. Its first live international card transaction in the country was a test rather than a launch, and the milestone event ran through a Lebanese bank.

The acquirer (the bank on the merchant’s side of a card payment) was Fransabank Lebanon, with Paymera as the other named partner. Nadim Moujaes, who heads a Fransabank Group subsidiary, describes the test as both the culmination of “longstanding efforts to link Syria back to international payment networks” and “the first step in a larger path”.

Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa makes the first electronic payment in Syria using a @Visa card at a store in Damascus, following the lifting of US sanctions on Syria. pic.twitter.com/lpAN7nQ6Fc

— Tech Magazine (@TechMGZN) August 27, 2026

“We are excited to have successfully tested live transactions today as we plan to enable international visitors to use their Visa cards while in Syria,” says Leila Serhan, Visa’s senior vice president and group country manager for the North Africa, Levant and Pakistan region. Although a significant first step, that plan doesn’t come with a hard date for when a visitor’s card will work normally.

Mohammed Safwat Raslan, governor of the Central Bank of Syria, says the test paves the way for international card acceptance in Syria and that maintaining strong compliance, risk management and operational controls will remain essential. Serhan likewise stresses that Visa has worked within applicable legal, regulatory and compliance requirements. For a test transaction, it seems there was a great deal of attention paid to the rules, with the entire operation being carefully managed.

Also Read: Lebanon’s 5G Era Begins With 150 Stations And A $1M Budget

The test is the latest step in a sequence that began in December 2025, when Visa announced a strategic roadmap to support Syria’s integration into the global digital economy. In February 2026 it hosted its first industry gathering of banks, ecosystem partners and policymakers in Damascus and, the same month, signed an agreement with Syria’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology in San Francisco.

Michel Kattouah, Paymera’s CEO, called the test “the return of international card acceptance,” but while that’s positive news, there’s no word yet on when a Syrian bank will issue a Visa card to a Syrian customer.