Elon Musk has announced plans for his AI startup xAI to partner with Saudi Arabia’s state-backed AI venture Humain to build a massive 500-megawatt data center in the kingdom, powered by Nvidia chips.
Largest Saudi Investments with xAI partnership
This project is one of the largest Saudi investments in AI infrastructure to date. It highlights Riyadh’s goal to become a global hub for artificial intelligence. Musk revealed the initiative on Wednesday, November 19, at a US-Saudi investment forum in Washington, where he spoke alongside Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.
Musk has been quickly expanding xAI, the company behind the AI chatbot Grok, after his split with OpenAI, a company he co-founded. He has placed xAI as a competitor to OpenAI and Anthropic, racing to develop more powerful AI models and secure access to high-performance computing chips.
Works on 500-Megawatt AI Data Center
Humain is a key player in Saudi Arabia’s xAI efforts and has been working with Nvidia and other chip suppliers. However, the kingdom has faced a significant obstacle: US export restrictions on the most advanced AI chips.
The planned 500 MW data center will be much larger than typical AI facilities and will rely heavily on Nvidia’s graphics processing units (GPUs), which are the best choice for training and deploying AI models. This partnership provides Musk with a strong new infrastructure base for xAI while giving Saudi Arabia a major boost.
Read also: BPSC 71st Prelims Result 2025 out: Over 14,200 Candidates Qualify