Inside Saudi Arabia's AI Ambition: Tareq Amin on Building a New Tech Superpower

I believe connectivity is a human right.

The conversation opens with a statement of purpose. The speaker calls Saudi Arabia a country with "a incredible potential capability to really build a digital champion and a digital hub for the region," and the guest is introduced on stage as "Humane's Tariq Amin." One of the hosts says they have been spending more time in the Middle East, describes the region as changing "dramatically year after year," and announces a Founder University program in Riyadh on November 3rd, 4th and 5th. They then ask what has changed in the region over the past five years.

The answer is personal. The speaker says they were born in Amman, Jordan, studied and built a career in the U.S., and moved from Tokyo to Saudi Arabia. It was their first job in the region, and they "didn't know what to expect." The first thing they noticed was the people's hospitality, which made them feel "back home." The second was the population's age: "awfully young, and hungry for new things and new advancements."

The speaker admits to an earlier worry, which they say others raised too: that talent and opportunity could be a big challenge for the new venture. They describe the reality as "remarkable" across government and society. In their view, society has embraced a future in which "digital and AI is fundamental to their transformation." This is a first-person impression, not measured evidence.

Asked what Humane is and how it started, the speaker contrasts it with the U.S., where a startup can go to a hyperscaler and be "ready to go" in 30 seconds. At the time, the speaker had been hired to run a new Aramco subsidiary meant to diversify beyond Aramco's core business, with digital and AI (transcribed as "Digiton AI") at its center. The speaker calls the lack of AI infrastructure "one of the biggest surprises" of that job.

The concrete example is a delay. Even a company as large as Aramco needed nine months to get from purchase order through export control, deployment and installation. The speaker concludes that this "hindered a company to really achieve its objectives by nine months." They then met several ministers and argued that the country had "an abundance of land, an abundance of power, amazing connectivity" and could take part in global digital infrastructure.