LEAP 2026 made clear that leaders across the Middle East are moving quickly from AI ambition to actual execution. Among more than 200,000 attendees in Riyadh, spanning investors, policymakers, and industry leaders from established tech companies to startups, AMD was positioned at the center of a broader regional push to turn AI infrastructure investment into practical, measurable results.
The Middle East has become a global hub for AI and technology innovation, not simply by investing in infrastructure, but by increasingly shaping how sovereign AI, enterprise adoption, digital infrastructure, and local talent development come together at scale. AMD frames itself as deeply involved in that transition, working across the region with a broad portfolio spanning CPUs, GPUs, adaptive and embedded computing, networking, and open software.
During LEAP 2026, AMD Chair and CEO Dr. Lisa Su emphasized the region's importance to the future of AI while sharing the main stage with Saudi Arabia's Minister of Communications and Information Technology, Abdullah bin Amer Alswaha, and HUMAIN CEO Tareq Amin. Across conversations with customers, partners, and policymakers, the central questions were about return on AI investment: how to translate infrastructure into measurable business value, how enterprises move from early pilots to productivity gains and competitive advantage, and how to develop local talent and protect data while enabling sovereign AI and meaningful economic impact.
In Saudi Arabia, AMD, Cisco, and HUMAIN announced that production AI infrastructure, powered by AMD Instinct MI355X GPUs, AMD EPYC CPUs, and Cisco networking equipment, is now live and serving customers. The companies also plan to deploy up to 250 megawatts of additional AI infrastructure beginning in 2027, with their joint venture remaining on track to reach up to 1 gigawatt of capacity by 2030.
The companies frame AI leadership as something that will ultimately be measured not just by installed computing capacity, but by the innovation, productivity, and economic value that capacity actually enables. For Saudi Arabia, this progress also supports the country's broader Vision 2030 goals by pairing digital infrastructure with local capability, innovation, and new opportunities for enterprises and developers.
A separate open developer ecosystem initiative, announced by AMD together with Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Communications and Information Technology and the Digital Cooperation Organization, will give developers, startups, and software engineers access to open software tools, training, technical expertise, and resources focused on responsible AI governance.
Many business leaders understand AI's potential but are still working out where to start, which workloads matter most, and how to demonstrate measurable returns before scaling up. The HUMAIN AI Application Platform, also called "AI-in-a-Box," is designed to address that challenge by giving Saudi enterprises a more accessible entry point into AI adoption. It combines AMD Instinct GPUs and AMD EPYC CPUs with HUMAIN's own capabilities, letting organizations test workloads and deploy initial AI tools without needing to start with hyperscale infrastructure.
This creates a bridge between sovereign infrastructure built at a national scale and practical, everyday enterprise adoption. For many companies, the most effective AI strategy starts with a clearly defined business problem, a specific workload that can demonstrate real value, and an architecture that can grow alongside the organization, with the ultimate goal of moving from experimentation to measurable return on investment and lasting business value.
This same progression is unfolding beyond Saudi Arabia as well. In the United Arab Emirates, AMD and e& UAE are collaborating across AI-ready cloud, telecom, enterprise, and edge infrastructure, while a separate collaboration with Core42, a G42 company, is advancing AI, machine learning, and confidential computing for cloud environments. In Qatar, AMD and MEEZA are working together to accelerate AI adoption, including exploring AMD technology within MEEZA's data centers to support growing demand for accelerated computing and advanced AI models.
These partnerships reflect a broader regional shift, with AI moving from large-scale infrastructure projects into enterprise systems, telecom networks, and edge computing. Customers increasingly need the flexibility to deploy computing power wherever it makes the most sense for their workloads, data, economics, and security requirements. Across these different markets, the overall direction is consistent: AI investment is shifting from planning toward deployment, adoption, and measurable impact.
Why AMD Sees Itself Positioned for This Moment
Taken together, these initiatives span large-scale AI infrastructure, sovereign capability, developer skill-building, enterprise adoption, cloud modernization, edge computing, and secure public-sector AI. AMD frames its broad product portfolio as uniquely suited to this range of needs, allowing it to work with customers across national-scale AI infrastructure, enterprise data centers, telecom networks, edge systems, and intelligent devices.
AMD also frames openness as central to its approach, arguing that customers should have choice, developers should have access to open tools, governments should retain flexibility and control, and partners should be able to bring their own innovation into the broader ecosystem. The company describes what it observed at LEAP as one part of a larger transformation taking place across the Middle East, where the region is building not just AI infrastructure, but the capabilities, ecosystems, and partnerships needed to convert AI investment into lasting economic and business value, describing its own commitment to the region as long-term and still in its early stages.
