HUMAIN and KAUST are working toward making KAUST's Shaheen III CPU High-Performance Computing (HPC) capability available through HUMAIN Cloud, alongside AI platforms, frontier models, and developer services. 

King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) and HUMAIN, a PIF company building full-stack artificial intelligence capabilities globally, announce a strategic collaboration on high-performance computing. The parties plan for KAUST's Shaheen III CPU-based supercomputer to serve as a compute resource for HUMAIN's planned AI cloud offering. 

Through this collaboration, KAUST's Shaheen III CPU, which ranked 64th globally on the TOP500’s June 2026 list of most powerful computer systems in the world, is intended to provide access to large-scale compute capability within HUMAIN Cloud. 

The collaboration is expected to expand access to advanced high-performance computing (HPC) capabilities for selected eligible enterprises and researchers, supporting data processing and analytics, scientific discovery, and complex engineering applications. 

Designed and built in Saudi Arabia to support global cloud and HPC workloads, the planned sovereign cloud platform is intended to enable AI development workflows and other compute-intensive applications, providing researchers, enterprises, developers, and public and private sector organizations with secure, scalable infrastructure for engineering simulation, digital twins, data analytics, and a broad range of advanced HPC use cases. 

KAUST and HUMAIN intend to explore collaboration across a range of high-performance computing domains, including biotechnology, materials science, oil and gas, and manufacturing. Together, they aim to support customers in developing domain-specific solutions on HUMAIN's planned HPC-as-a-Service (HPCaaS) platform by providing industry blueprints, reference architectures, and technical expertise tailored to compute intensive applications.  

The collaboration is expected to expand the computing capabilities available through HUMAIN Cloud, broadening access to secure, high-performance computing for data analytics and scientific workloads across approved research and commercial applications.  

"The quality, scale, and accessibility of the infrastructure behind it will shape the next era of AI. HUMAIN Cloud is designed to bring together advanced compute, AI platforms, frontier models, and developer services into a unified environment that enables innovation at scale. Availing KAUST’s Shaheen III CPU within the HUMAIN Cloud ecosystem would expand the capabilities available to researchers, developers, and enterprises, creating new opportunities to accelerate AI development and solve increasingly complex computational challenges at unprecedented scale," said Tareq Amin, CEO of HUMAIN.  

“As demand for HPC and AI infrastructure continues to grow, the collaboration reflects a shared commitment to making advanced computing more accessible. By leveraging leading HPC capabilities through HUMAIN Cloud, HUMAIN and KAUST are creating a platform to accelerate scientific discovery, AI innovation, and the development of next-generation intelligent applications,” said KAUST President Sir Edward Byrne AC.