A U.S.-based artificial intelligence startup is partnering with the Saudi Arabian government’s AI firm for a major expansion of its computing infrastructure, as technology companies face growing resistance to data centers powering the AI boom in the homeland.San Francisco-based Together AI announced an agreement on Monday with Humain, Saudi Arabia’s state-backed AI company, to build a 250 megawatt data center in the kingdom. The partnership is expected to rake in $5 billion annually, Together AI told the New York Times.Together AI’s co-founder and CEO, Vipul Prakash, told the outlet the collaboration is the result of growing backlash from American communities toward data centers.
“More and more, local communities don’t want data centers in their backyards, and there are a lot of cancellations and moratoriums, so U.S. capacity is becoming even more constrained,” Prakash said.Data centers require large amounts of energy to operate and consume water directly for cooling their computer servers and indirectly for power, which has caused alarm for nearby residents who fear the large-scale campuses will affect their utility bills.Together AI provides cloud computing services that allow companies and developers to train and operate open-source AI models. Founded in 2022, the company says its platform is used by more than 1 million developers. Under the Saudi partnership, customers will be able to use Together AI’s platform while running their workloads on infrastructure located in the kingdom.The U.S. company is the latest technology firm to venture to Saudi Arabia for infrastructure as the kingdom looks to expand its AI economy. Oracle, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon Web Services all operate or utilize data centers in Saudi Arabia in partnership with Humain.NASA FLOATS SENDING DATA CENTERS TO SPACEHumain was launched by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman last year to kickstart the kingdom’s AI industry. Many of the deals with American companies were enabled by the U.S. making way for Humain to purchase advanced American semiconductors.In brokering a deal with Humain, Together AI will nearly triple its computing capacity. Prakash said the company will continue to look overseas to expand its data centers because “there’s probably more international capacity that gets built than in the U.S.”
