TLDR: HUMAIN, a Saudi PIF company, in collaboration with Groq, has successfully deployed OpenAI’s new open-source models, gpt-oss-120B and gpt-oss-20B, within sovereign data centers in Saudi Arabia. This strategic move, leveraging Groq’s high-speed inference platform, positions the Kingdom as a regional AI hub, ensuring data sovereignty and providing local developers and enterprises with access to cutting-edge AI capabilities at unprecedented speeds.
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia – In a significant leap forward for artificial intelligence capabilities in the Middle East, HUMAIN, a company backed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) and a leading AI services provider, has announced the full deployment of OpenAI’s newly released open-source models, gpt-oss-120B and gpt-oss-20B, within its sovereign data centers in the Kingdom. This landmark achievement is a result of a strategic partnership with Groq, a US-based company renowned for its ultra-high-speed AI inference hardware.
The deployment marks Saudi Arabia as the first country in the region to host these advanced OpenAI models locally, ensuring full compliance with national regulatory and data sovereignty frameworks. The models are operated on Groq’s custom-built processing platform, designed to deliver consistent, high-speed performance, which is crucial for demanding AI applications.
Tareq Amin, CEO of HUMAIN, emphasized the strategic importance of this development, stating, “This is a defining moment for Saudi Arabia. By hosting the world’s most powerful open models locally, we are enabling Saudi innovators to access frontier AI with full sovereignty. This is what AI leadership looks like.” He further added, “With the deployment of OpenAI’s most powerful open models, hosted right here inside the Kingdom, Saudi developers, researchers, and enterprises now have direct access to the global frontier of AI — fully aligned with our national regulations and data laws.”
Groq’s CEO, Jonathan Ross, highlighted the technical prowess and collaborative spirit, commenting, “OpenAI is setting a new high-performance standard in open source models. Groq was built to run models like this – fast and affordably – so developers everywhere can use them from day zero. Working with HUMAIN strengthens local access and support in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, empowering developers in the region to build smarter and faster.” He also noted, “Our partnership with HUMAIN puts us at the center of one of the most ambitious AI ecosystems globally.”
The gpt-oss-120B and gpt-oss-20B models offer unprecedented scale, featuring 128K context windows and integrated tools for real-time code execution and semantic search. Performance metrics are impressive, with the gpt-oss-120B model operating at over 500 tokens per second and the gpt-oss-20B exceeding 1,000 tokens per second on Groq’s infrastructure. These speeds enable advanced reasoning and dialogue at previously unmatched rates.
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This initiative is a cornerstone of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030, aiming to diversify its economy and establish itself as a key player in the global AI landscape. The establishment of HUMAIN by PIF in May 2025, backed by commitments from major tech giants like Nvidia, AMD, Cisco, and Amazon Web Services, underscores the Kingdom’s multi-billion-dollar investment in expanding local AI compute capacity, data centers, and foundational models. This latest deployment further solidifies the strategic collaboration between HUMAIN and Groq, which was initially revealed in May 2025, following a US$1.5 billion funding commitment from Saudi Arabia to Groq in February 2025 for its advanced LPU-based AI inference infrastructure.
