A US-based video artificial intelligence startup is set to shift part of its computing operations to Saudi Arabia after Washington approved the sale of tens of thousands of advanced AI chips to the kingdom, according to a report by Semafor.
Citing an interview with Luma AI chief executive Amit Jain, Semafor reported that the approval to purchase large volumes of cutting-edge chips has removed a major uncertainty around Saudi Arabia’s ambitions to become a global AI hub.
“The biggest uncertainty that was there is gone. The pipes are clear” for the kingdom’s access to AI chips, Jain told Semafor.
The approval allows HUMAIN, an AI company backed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), to buy 35,000 Blackwell chips from Nvidia. The announcement was made during Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s visit to US President Donald Trump.
HUMAIN also led a $900 million funding round in Luma AI, valuing the California-based startup at more than $4 billion, the report said. The company expects that the initial batch of chips is only the beginning, with plans to acquire up to 400,000 chips over the next four years.
Saudi Arabia has said it aims to become the world’s third-largest AI hub, behind the United States and China, as it invests billions of dollars in data centre infrastructure.
Luma AI, which develops models capable of generating videos and images, markets its tools to creative industries such as advertising and filmmaking. Jain told Semafor that the company will begin using Saudi-based compute capacity within weeks and sees the kingdom as a potential global centre for AI inference.
The startup has also opened a regional headquarters in Saudi Arabia and is in discussions with PIF and its portfolio companies to adopt its technology.
HUMAIN and Luma AI have agreed to collaborate on HUMAIN Create, an initiative aimed at producing advertising, video games and films using AI. The two companies also plan to work on developing an Arabic-language AI model and have signed a deal with Publicis Groupe for AI-driven advertising and production across the Middle East and North Africa.
On concerns about whether audiences will embrace AI-generated content, Jain said consumer response would ultimately decide. “It doesn’t matter how you made it,” he told Semafor. “If it’s interesting, people are gonna watch it.”
