Humain CEO Tareq Amin’s $3 billion investment in xAI positions Saudi Arabia at the center of a rapidly shifting global A.I. power structure. Photo by Amal Alhasan/Getty Images for Fortune Media
Tareq Amin, CEO of Saudi Arabia’s largest A.I. company, Humain, has been on a dealmaking blitz since taking the helm of the Kingdom’s national A.I. initiative last year. His latest move: a $3 billion investment in Elon Musk’s xAI. The investment was made during xAI’s $20 billion fundraising round in January, Humain announced today (Feb. 18). The raise came just weeks before xAI merged with Musk’s SpaceX earlier this month, as Musk consolidates his A.I., communications and space ambitions ahead of a widely anticipated IPO.
Founded in 2025 by Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman and backed by Saudi Arabia’s massive sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund. Humain sits at the center of the Kingdom’s push to diversify its economy beyond oil. A core part of that mandate: building sovereign A.I. infrastructure at home.
The xAI stake is the latest example of Humain’s ability to “deploy meaningful capital behind exceptional opportunities where long-term vision, technical excellence and execution converge,” said Amin in a statement. Amin, who previously led Aramco Digital and Japan’s Rakuten Mobile, has spent the past several months striking blockbuster partnerships with U.S. tech heavyweights, including Nvidia, AMD, Cisco, Amazon Web Services and Groq (not xAI’s chatbot Grok).
Humain did not respond to requests for comment from Observer.
Most of the partnerships are focused on expanding Saudi Arabia’s data center footprint and compute capacity. A joint venture with AMD and Cisco, for example, aims to build domestic A.I. infrastructure capable of powering up to one gigawatt.
xAI’s relationship with Humain dates back to November, when the companies unveiled plans for a 500-megawatt data center in Saudi Arabia. The facility—xAI’s first outside the U.S.—will run on Nvidia chips and deploy the company’s Grok models across the Kingdom.
Humain’s deepening ties to xAI underscore a broader realignment in global A.I. alliances, with Gulf states emerging as critical capital providers and infrastructure hubs for American developers. In November, Humain and the United Arab Emirates’ A.I. company, G42, received U.S. approval to acquire up to 35,000 advanced A.I. chips each, marking a sharp reversal from earlier semiconductor export restrictions.
The Emirati-backed MGX has participated in large fundraising rounds for xAI, OpenAI and Anthropic, while Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund earlier this week joined Anthropic’s new $380 billion Series G financing—further cementing the Middle East’s growing influence over the future of A.I.
Financial institutions that are deploying gen AI are seeing efficiencies, but quantifying ROI is difficult. Returns from traditional machine learning are more quantifiable than returns from generative AI, Valley Bank Chief Data and Analytics Officer Sanjay Sidhwani told FinAi News. “Traditional AI is a tool that gives binary yes or no decisions, which are easily quantifiable,” Sidhwani said. “With generative AI, that link is kind of missing as of now because outcomes are much more qualitative.” Until an institution pauses hiring, speeds up a process or downsizes […]
Michael Burry attends “The Big Short” New York screening at the Ziegfeld Theater on Nov. 23, 2015 in New York City. Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images
Michael Burry, the famed “Big Short” investor who predicted the 2008 housing crash, is once again warning of an emerging market bubble. Nearly two decades later, the hedge fund manager is now sounding alarms about the sky-high valuations of A.I. companies and is voicing them on a modern forum: Substack.
Yesterday (Nov. 23), Burry launched a newsletter on the platform that will focus on his bearish views on the technology, among other topics. “The current market environment is contentious and running hot. Lots to talk about,” he wrote in the description accompanying his new Substack, which has already amassed more than 35,000 subscribers. Access costs $379 annually or $39 per month.
One of his first posts draws parallels between the lead-up to the dot-com crash of the early 2000s and today’s A.I. boom. Burry compared Nvidia—which recently became the first company to reach $5 trillion in market cap—to Cisco, the tech company whose stock soared and then collapsed during the dot-com era.
In an X post announcing his Substack, Burry expanded on the idea that the A.I. market may be echoing past bubbles. He cited former Federal Reserve chair Alan Greenspan, who assured investors in 2005 that a housing bubble “does not appear likely.” Burry then pointed out that Jerome Powell, the Fed’s current chair, has described A.I. companies as “profitable” and “different” from previous speculative manias.
Michael Burry’s mixed track record
Burry rose to prominence after spotting the warning signs of the subprime mortgage crisis—a bet that made him $100 million personally and earned more than $700 million for his clients. His prescient move was immortalized in Michael Lewis’ The Big Short and the subsequent film starring Christian Bale. After the global financial crisis, Warren Buffett told Congress that Burry was acting as a “Cassandra,” referring to the Trojan princess cursed to deliver true prophecies no one believed. His new newsletter pays homage to this feat through its name, “Cassandra Unchained.”
In recent years, Burry has made several market calls that didn’t pan out, but his latest warnings about A.I. have sparked fresh attention online. The buzz began in October, when he returned to X after a two-year hiatus to post: “Sometimes, we see bubbles. Sometimes, there is something to do about it. Sometimes, the only winning move is not to play.”
In his Substack description, Burry said Scion’s closure was partially motivated by a desire to share investment ideas more freely. “Running money professionally came with regulatory and compliance restrictions that effectively muzzled my ability to communicate,” he wrote. “These constraints meant I could only share cryptic fragments publicly, if at all.”
Burry told readers to expect one to two posts a week, along with occasional Q&As, videos and guest contributions. Rather than placing bets, he’ll be breaking down markets.
“I am not retired,” said Burry. “There is still nothing I enjoy more than analyzing companies and markets each and every day.”
Technology’s new origin stories are emerging from hubs in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, India and Africa. Unsplash+
Since the 1960s, the story of technology has followed a familiar pattern. Innovation emerged in Silicon Valley garages, Boston laboratories or European cafés and gradually spread worldwide. Today, that pattern is changing. The future of tech is being equally developed in Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, Bengaluru and Jakarta. Innovation is decentralizing, and not only in terms of infrastructure and investment but also through culture, religion and sovereignty. This new center of gravity is changing whose values will define the tools that the world will use tomorrow.
The Gulf’s ambitious tech push
The United Arab Emirates has quickly become one of the most assertive new players. In May, during President Trump’s visit, Abu Dhabi announced the release of Stargate UAE, a 10-square-mile A.I. campus spearheaded by G42. Once fully operational, it will be one of the largest A.I.-centered campuses in the world, with a planned five-gigawatt capacity and an initial 200-megawatt phase set for 2026.
Stargate will accommodate hundreds of thousands of advanced chips and is strategically located within a two-thousand-mile range of nearly half the global population. Framed as a U.S.-UAE partnership, the agreement eases previous export restrictions and charts a path for safe deployment. Cisco, SoftBank and American chipmakers have pledged support, signaling the UAE’s ambition to be not just a technology consumer but also a global authority in the A.I. ecosystem. The point was made plainly: Abu Dhabi is positioning itself as both a setter and consumer of standards.
The UAE push extends beyond hardware. It has invested billions in A.I.-driven government services designed to make public administration more predictive and efficient, including systems that assist civil servants in rapidly revising regulations. Language is also central to this strategy. The open model, Falcon Arabic, adapted to the nuances of the Arabic language, is a technological and cultural declaration. In the UAE, innovation is no longer about catching up. It’s about authorship, rooted in identity and scaled through global collaboration.
Saudi Arabia is making its own similarly bold statement. The Public Investment Fund (PIF) launched HUMAIN this year, a sovereign A.I. developing an entire stack of data centers, cloud infrastructure, language models and consumer applications. Already, the locally produced Allam-based Humain Chat serves millions of Arabic- and English-speaking users, with customized guardrails to reflect local values. More than a chatbot, this is an assertion of cultural and linguistic sovereignty.
The Kingdom supports this vision through funding and equipment. At LEAP 2025, American chipmaker that specializes in ultra-fast inference, Groq, announced a $1.5 billion expansion in Saudi Arabia, backed by the PIF. The initial large-scale HUMAIN data centers in Riyadh and Dammam, each with 100-megawatt capacity, will be launched in 2026. Alongside nearly $15 billion in additional A.I. investments announced concurrently, these steps indicate that Saudi Arabia’s goal is to become a compute powerhouse rather than a passive participant. Once talent can leverage local infrastructure in their own language, the innovation pipeline can begin at home.
India’s integration of tech with culture
India presents a complementary, yet distinct, vision. Digital products have transformed everyday life across the country. The Unified Payments Interface (UPI) currently processes over 20 billion transactions monthly, enabling small ideas to scale rapidly in a nation of 1.4 billion people. During the 2025 Mahakumbh pilgrimage, A.I. tools managed flows to the tune of millions, with multilingual assistants helping navigate complex rituals. These examples illustrate how India integrates technology with cultural and religious life, making it feel less like an import and more like a facilitator of tradition. The IndiaAI Mission, a $1.2 billion initiative supporting shared compute and multilingual models, reduces barriers for startups and researchers nationwide. The resulting ecosystem combines scale, meaning and diversity, illustrating how technology can be adapted in local contexts while still fostering innovation.
Africa and the broader Global South
Decentralization extends beyond South Asia and the Gulf. Kenya’s Konza Technopolis in Nairobi is emerging as an intelligent city supporting startups, academia and research. Yet some of the regions’ most radical innovations are rural: A.I. tools assist farmers in forecasting weather and crop yields amid volatile climatic conditions.
In Nigeria, hubs in Lagos and Ilorin support startups designing voice systems attuned to African accents. These systems help deliver healthcare services or financial tools to farmers in local dialects. While these initiatives may appear modest in comparison to a five-gigawatt A.I. campus, they share a common DNA: locally relevant innovation aimed at solving real-world problems.
Across these regions, there is a common thread. Decentralization is not just the geographic spread of technology. It is the reshaping of technology itself. The Hajj in Makkah provides key lessons in crowd management, which have applications in emergency systems across the globe. India’s street market payment rails have become benchmarks for emerging economies. African voice tools expand inclusivity. Influence spreads because these innovations are practical and culturally attuned.
Challenges and the road ahead
Hurdles remain. Infrastructure must be built, maintained and operated effectively. Laws must protect privacy and rights without choking development. Talent pipelines require years to mature. Yet the trajectory is evident: projects like Stargeate and HUMAIN are not isolated experiments. They’re declarations that new centers of gravity in tech have arrived. India, Kenya and Nigeria show that cultural context—faith, language, community—is not an inhibitor of innovation, but a guide.
The decentralization of innovation signals a paradigm shift. Global technology will no longer emerge solely from historic powerhouses. Instead, it will reflect diverse cultural and social priorities, embedding meaning and relevance into the very tools that shape our future.
Yousef Khalili is the Global Chief Transformation Officer and CEO MEA at Quant, which develops cutting-edge digital employee technology.
Only one percent of organizations in the Philippines have the ‘Mature’ level of readiness needed to be resilient against modern cybersecurity risks, according to Cisco’s 2024 Cybersecurity Readiness Index.
The 2024 Cisco Cybersecurity Readiness Index was developed in an era defined by hyperconnectivity and a rapidly evolving threat landscape. Companies today continue to be targeted with a variety of techniques that range from phishing and ransomware to supply chain and social engineering attacks. And while they are building defenses against these attacks, they still struggle to defend against them, slowed down by their own overly complex security postures that are dominated by multiple-point solutions.
These challenges are compounded in today’s distributed working environments, where data can be spread across limitless services, devices, applications, and users. However, 78% of companies still feel moderately to very confident in their ability to defend against a cyberattack with their current infrastructure — this disparity between confidence and readiness suggests that companies may have misplaced confidence in their ability to navigate the threat landscape and may not be properly assessing the true scale of the challenges they face.
2024 Cisco Cybersecurity Readiness Index: Underprepared and Overconfident Companies Tackle an Evolving Threat Landscape
The Index assesses the readiness of companies on five key pillars: Identity Intelligence, Network Resilience, Machine Trustworthiness, Cloud Reinforcement, and AI Fortification, which are comprised of 31 corresponding solutions and capabilities. It is based on a double-blind survey of more than 8,000 private sector security and business leaders across 30 global markets conducted by an independent third party. The respondents were asked to indicate which of these solutions and capabilities they had deployed and the stage of deployment. Companies were then classified into four stages of increasing readiness: Beginner, Formative, Progressive, and Mature.
“We cannot underestimate the threat posed by our own overconfidence,” said Jeetu Patel, executive vice president and general manager of Security and Collaboration at Cisco. “Today’s organizations need to prioritize investments in integrated platforms and lean into AI in order to operate at machine scale and finally tip the scales in the favor of defenders.”
Findings
Overall, the study found that only one percent of companies in the Philippines are ready to tackle today’s threats, with 64% of organizations falling into the Beginner or Formative stages of readiness. Globally, 3% of companies are at a Mature stage. Further:
Future Cyber Incidents Expected: 67% of respondents said they expect a cybersecurity incident to disrupt their business in the next 12 to 24 months. The cost of being unprepared can be substantial, as 59% of respondents said they experienced a cybersecurity incident in the last 12 months, and 36% of those affected said it cost them at least USD300,000.
Point Solution Overload: The traditional approach of adopting multiple cybersecurity point solutions has not delivered effective results, as 76% of respondents admitted that having multiple point solutions slowed down their team’s ability to detect, respond, and recover from incidents. This raises significant concerns as 66% of organizations said they have deployed ten or more point solutions in their security stacks, while 24% said they have 30 or more.
Unsecure and Unmanaged Devices Add Complexity: 85% of companies said their employees access company platforms from unmanaged devices, and 38% of those spend one-fifth (20%) of their time logged onto company networks from unmanaged devices. Additionally, 34% reported that their employees hop between at least six networks over a week.
The Cyber Talent Gap Persists: Progress is being further hampered by critical talent shortages, with 91% of companies highlighting it as an issue. In fact, 36% of companies said they had more than ten roles related to cybersecurity unfilled in their organization at the time of the survey.
Future Cyber Investments Ramping Up: Companies are aware of the challenge and are ramping up their defenses with over half (68%) planning to significantly upgrade their IT infrastructure in the next 12 to 24 months. This is a marked increase from half (54%) who planned to do so last year. Most prominently, organizations plan to upgrade existing solutions (70%), deploy new solutions (51%), and invest in AI-driven technologies (39%). Further, almost all (99%) companies surveyed expect to increase their cybersecurity budget in the next 12 months, and 92% of respondents say their budgets will increase by 10% or more.
To overcome the challenges of today’s threat landscape, companies must accelerate meaningful investments in security, including the adoption of innovative security measures and a security platform approach, strengthen their network resilience, establish meaningful use of generative AI, and ramp up recruitment to bridge the cybersecurity skills gap.
“The threat landscape today is more complicated than ever and organizations globally including those in the Philippines continue to lag in their cyber resilience. Companies need to adopt a platform approach that will provide a simple, secure, single pane of glass view into their entire architecture to strengthen their security posture and best take advantage of the opportunities that come with emerging technologies,” said Zaza Soriano-Nicart, managing director, Cisco Philippines.
With Cisco Systems Inc.’s pending acquisition of Splunk Inc., the networking giant is making another major step toward becoming a software company.
On Thursday, Cisco CSCO said it was buying Splunk SPLK in a deal valued at about $28 billion, or $157 a share in cash, for the cloud-security company. The match had been speculated about for years, and Cisco has been on a buying binge this year, as it seeks to grow with more security and software offerings.
Registering accelerated growth in the Indian market over the last two years, technology giant Cisco is eyeing scale with its Webex ecosystem. The company has invested in a dedicated India Webex infrastructure, obtained necessary regulatory licenses to accelerate Webex adoption across the country, introduced a full suite of Webex devices in the country, and lowered the Webex suite’s pricing by 50 per cent. India is the second largest market after the US in terms of usage for Cisco.
Purpose-built for hybrid work, the Webex Suite offers a host of collaboration tools that include calling, meetings, messaging, webinars, polling, and webinars while focusing on security. Previously priced upwards of Rs 1,000, Cisco has now lowered the price to Rs 550 per user.
“Our goal is to create a more inclusive work experience for the three-fold growth expected in the number of digital workers in India by 2030. If we do this right, we can level the playing field and create new opportunities, regardless of geographic borders, socio-economic background, or language,” says Dave West, President Cisco APJC.
Webex infrastructure
The India Webex infrastructure, dedicated to collaboration solutions in the country, includes a dedicated data centre and is backed by Cisco Secure products and solutions to ensure data privacy and security. The data center will offer a host of services to customers and allow Cisco to sustain continued growth, facilitate a rich user experience, and deliver industry-leading security and management across the Webex Suite. In addition, local dedicated Webex infrastructure will lower operating costs, increase technical efficiencies, and enable Cisco to provide India-specific pricing for customers. This data center will also allow Cisco to partner with more start-ups, customers, partners, and service providers in India.
This investment comes on the back of a massive and permanent shift towards hybrid work models. According to the Cisco Hybrid Work Study 2022, almost 3 in 4 Indian employees favor a hybrid working environment in the future. Recognising the growing need for more flexible work models, the Government is also taking the lead in building regulatory frameworks to facilitate hybrid work across the nation.
“This is a significant milestone in our endeavor to power hybrid work at scale and speed. As more companies go hybrid, the demand for secure and adaptable hybrid work solutions will increase. With this investment we are looking to capture a growing market that is expected to reach over USD 250 million in India by 2025. With dedicated India Webex infrastructure, we can now offer enhanced performance at a much lower cost to our customers, and empower their move to a successful hybrid working future,” says Daisy Chittilapilly, President, Cisco India & SAARC
Webex devices
Cisco not just offers video conferencing software but has a broad portfolio of Webex devices (hardware) as well available in different form factors and designs that one can choose from. This includes headsets, cameras, desk series, room services, accessories and more. And to scale up in the Indian market, customers who have signed up for Webex Suite will get professional pricing with up to 50 per cent off on Webex devices.
