Qualcomm to launch 6G in Saudi Arabia in 2029... and Adobe is the first international customer for Humane Qualcomm is moving to expand its technological presence in Saudi Arabia through a new collaboration with King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) to develop sixth-generation technologies, alongside expanding its partnership with Humane, which will receive Adobe as its first international customer to run tasks on its infrastructure accelerated by the American company's technologies, according to Asharq with Bloomberg. Wassim Chourbaji, head of Qualcomm for the Europe, Middle East, and Africa region, revealed in an interview with Asharq Bloomberg on the sidelines of LEAP 2026 that the collaboration with KAUST aims to begin the commercial launch of sixth-generation technologies in 2029. He added that the company wants the partnership to help position Saudi Arabia at an advanced level in sixth-generation technologies, which will integrate artificial intelligence into their design natively. This comes at a time when Saudi Arabia is working on developing its communications network through fiber optics and space communications solutions, after the Kingdom became first globally in digital readiness and among advanced countries in global technology indicators, according to Minister of Communications and Information Technology Abdullah Al-Swaha during a press conference yesterday, Sunday. Wed, 26 2026 According to a statement regarding the collaboration, Adobe will become the first global software company to transfer artificial intelligence workloads to Humane's computing infrastructure, as it will move its regional AI data annotation workloads to locally hosted infrastructure, keeping data and computing within the Kingdom. These workloads will run on Humane's infrastructure and Qualcomm Dragonfly AI accelerators, with additional migrations expected from companies in other sectors, according to the statement. Chourbaji noted that operations have already begun on the infrastructure, saying: "We have started running several tasks," adding that what is currently operational includes "international operational tasks, alongside local Saudi tasks," with the aim of providing sovereign AI computing capacity. What are the joint projects with Humane? The collaboration between Qualcomm and Humane extends to AI data centers and edge computing. Qualcomm has opened an engineering office in the same building as Humane, housing engineers working on joint development and engineering between the two companies. Qualcomm intends to expand data center capabilities with the start of operations of Dragonfly AI 200 and AI 250 chips, along with plans to launch AI 300. The company is also working on introducing "high-bandwidth computing" technology to Humane, aiming to improve memory bandwidth efficiency and reduce the total cost of AI inference operations, according to Chourbaji. Chourbaji also touched on collaboration in the hardware field, including Humane's AI computer, designed for enterprise use and capable of running multiple tasks on the same device, as well as smart glasses that run AI directly on them. Sun, 30 2026 Qualcomm's targets in the Saudi market The projects come within a broader plan for Qualcomm in the Saudi data center market, after the company previously announced a collaboration with Humane targeting a capacity of 200 megawatts. Chourbaji did not provide additional capacity targets due to non-disclosure agreements. He also did not specify the share Qualcomm aims to secure of the total computing capacity that Humane intends to build, noting that the Saudi company is developing a computing environment based on multiple types of chips. He said: "We are very ambitious with Humane," adding that Qualcomm wants to compete for AI workloads by combining hardware and an open software stack that allows inference operations to run on chips from different companies. Regarding the possibility of Saudi Arabia becoming one of Qualcomm's largest global markets for AI data centers, Chourbaji pointed to advantages including low energy costs and the availability of land and renewable energy as factors supporting the expansion of data centers in the Kingdom.

Humane, a Saudi Public Investment Fund company specialising in AI solutions, has invested $3 billion in xAI as part of a Series E funding round. The investment was made before SpaceX's acquisition of xAI in early February, with Humane's stake subsequently converted to SpaceX shares. The deal makes Humane a significant minority shareholder and positions it to benefit from long-term capital returns. Humane CEO Tariq Amin said the investment reflects the company's belief in AI's transformative role and its ability to deploy capital in exceptional opportunities. The investment extends a broader partnership announced in November 2025, which committed to developing over 500 megawatts of data centres and AI computing infrastructure, alongside deploying xAI's Grok models in Saudi Arabia.

"Today, Humane Inc fully unveils Ai Pin: the first wearable device and software platform built to harness the full power of artificial intelligence (AI).