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I believe connectivity is a human right. I felt that this is a great opportunity
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to really build and enable a country like Saudi Arabia that has a incredible potential and capability to really build
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a digital champion and a digital hub for the region. This is the first time I landed in a
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place where I feel I'm home. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Humane's Tar Amin.
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[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] I did. Good to see you. So, I've been spending a lot more time in
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the Middle East in the region. It's changing so dramatically year after year. Um, and I'm going to be, I
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announced on the podcast two weeks ago, I'll be doing Foundry University in Riyad, November 3rd, 4th, and 5th. And
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I'm really excited to partner with such a dynamic country. Maybe you could fill us in on what's changed over the last 5
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years in the region. Well, thank you very much. First of all, I must say it's the first time I did an
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event that's only 45 minutes away from my home. Um my flight from Riad uh obviously was 23 hours but uh just to
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give you some context um I was born in Aman Jordan before coming to the US to finish my studies and um you know
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progress in my life and my career. Um, so I moved from Tokyo to Saudi Arabia, but this is the first time I ever worked
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in the region. And um, I didn't know what to expect, you know. Um, you know, sometimes it def it depends on your
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perspective on how you look at the world. You know, I wanted to really discover and understand everything I
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used to hear under the massive opportunity of transformation and the diversification on the economy. You know
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my first observation is really started with discovery of how amazing the people were in terms of hospitality,
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welcom um I really felt like I'm back home. It's it felt very very different feeling to me. The second thing the
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population is awfully young and hungry and hungry for new things and new advancements.
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So um to me it was really a pleasant surprise because what I was really worried about and what everybody keeps
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talking about um maybe TK have done great things in his life talent and opportunity may be a big challenge in in
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his new venture and it was remarkable you know um in every aspect whether you look at at the government side in terms
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of society the transformation it has changed dramatically it's really really a u an area that I feel and the
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opportunity is remarkable and and the embracement of the society towards looking at the future in which digital
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and AI is fundamental to their transformation. Tara, can you maybe explain what humane
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is and how it came to be because it's it was sort of an evolution, right? Yeah, I mean it's it's uh you know for
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for you to know um I'll tell you we take things for granted in the US to a certain extent. Let's assume you're a
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startup here and you want to access compute. It's as simple as obviously going to hyperscaler and within 30
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seconds you're ready to go. So um uh this story is fascinating because my first discovery let's say in the role I
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was in at the time I was hired um uh to really run a subsidiary of Aramco uh a new company that was intended to
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diversify out of its core business in which digital AI was a really core component of it. One of the biggest
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surprises I had is lack of AI infrastructure. I mean I did not know that um the ability for startups companies to
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access AI infrastructure is a challenge. I mean it took look how large Aramco is
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took them 9 months from the process of purchase order export control process deployment installation. That means we
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have hindered a company to really achieve its objectives um by 9 months. So that was the first opportunity that I
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saw that we need to address in the country. I tell you the story because this is how the humane story started. So
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I started meeting with several ministers in the country. I told them I see nothing but opportunity. I see something
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that the country could really do and participate at a global space. I think we have an abundance of land, an
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abundance of power, amazing connectivity um and an opportunity to really participate in the digital
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infrastructure. So um uh last year during my birthday, I get a call and um uh it was like really
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a strange number. So I answered it. It says um it was from the royal court and um it said uh his royal highness wants
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to meet with you. I said okay what did I do? You know it was a uh so anyway I we
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all came in I said what's the topic? The topic was uh AI brainstorming and um this was the first time I had the
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opportunity to meet his royal highness and uh Muhammad bin Salam. Yeah. And let me tell you it was not
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about brainstorming. It was about really addressing what the country needs to do
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to accelerate to address some of the um fragmentation that exist. And the idea and the concept of humane is in order
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for us to really accelerate our development, let us now bring um uh public and private entity combines and
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take AI investments, projects, initiatives and put them one under one umbrella company that is really focused
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on the entire AI total value chain. So um honestly in that meeting I I could tell you it took about 10 minutes to
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come to realization that the opportunity is massive. But we need to really unite
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the fragmented effort and put our energy to address the basics and and you were given a pretty large
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balance sheet to do this with. Yeah. I mean look um I mean to to start with as you know uh building
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infrastructure is not necessarily uh a small task. So uh to do this and to participate and to make an impact you
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need to be very well funded. So um uh you know even though we call humane as a startup but it's actually a very
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wellunded startup between our data center segment our models team applications um and also our ventures
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that we will soon have in the United States is u you know is a very wellunded company that I'm feeling really
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comfortable about the opportunities that we could capture between capital people
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talent and partnerships. So should we think about this as there's you know we live in a world as you said when when
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you're back home here in the US there's AWS there's GCP there's you know Azure it's just simple straightforward but the
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rest of the world a little bit more complicated do you see humane being that competitive alternative for the rest of
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the world is that how it starts or well I think I think look at it in certain areas we partner really well and
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all of them are colleagues and friends I mean I've I've known the CEOs of these companies really well through my tenure
00:07:22
in Japan and India. But I will tell you I think many companies do not see the Middle East the way I see it today and
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they don't understand the requirements and the needs of what we have to do to build the depth and the talent. So I see
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in certain areas great partnerships and in certain other areas I think that we will be a compelling alternative but it
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doesn't mean that we don't partner. So um uh you know certainly when you see now the partnerships that we announced
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with uh the likes of AWS and Google uh clearly I want to see the companies invest in addressing the lack of
00:08:01
infrastructure that I saw. So a portion of what we do today will be built on things with our own technology and a
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portion will be done also with partnerships with the hyperscalers and what uh give us the lay of the land
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from the foundational model side the opensis the anthropics the gros how is that moving how do you work with
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them how do you make sure that you know everybody can get access to the latest models
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so so a couple of things we have done and look um for people in this audience that have participated on the build a
00:08:32
foundation model you It's not trivial and it's not easy. One of the acquisitions that has happened in humane
00:08:39
and this is where I was really really surprised to see the depth of science team I have today in humane. I mean this
00:08:47
is the first comment I get in my social post to say yes you have capital but there's no people no talent. So we ended
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up building a foundation model and I'll tell you the reason we did this. We built it from the scratch. It was not
00:09:00
distilled of any open- source tool. Well, for two reasons. I just wanted to see I mean a let's venture into this to
00:09:07
understand the depth and the capability of the organization. Second thing when it comes to culture, language and biases
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you know I felt that it's important for us to really participate in this arena. So um so we launched in uh Saudi Arabia
00:09:23
what we call humane chat. I just wanted to see the reaction from uh the people that uses this model and the whole
00:09:30
objective of it. Arabic first preference is the way we train this model, not English first preference.
00:09:36
And um I'm sorry, just on that, you see huge differences in how the foundational
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models process and digest data. I think for us and any model um that is used today
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um quality of data is always much better than I think just feeding at quantity of
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data. Our model today has a proprietary set of data in Arabic language that you cannot find on the public internet. So
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we had a proprietary data set that was important and obviously within the Arabic language the government today
00:10:08
uses all its correspondence, transactions, translations is in Arabic. So the preference of training first in
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Arabic is very different than you starting in English and then you add to it the Arabic components. Um, so we
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built that, we launched it, it actually now became the number one uh app in the app store in in the country. Um, it
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rallied really an important thing for us and and I'm I want to be really specific
00:10:32
that we didn't do this to say we're better than OpenAI or we're better than X or better than that. It was important
00:10:39
for us to train the team on understanding how to build the entire stack. It's really really critical and I
00:10:47
and I would tell you there's nothing else I would do different than the last nine months in building this foundation
00:10:54
model. We have um great partnerships today with um uh you know discussions with OpenAI uh Anthropic we use a lot
00:11:03
for our AI coding tool. So I I see this is not an option of use this or that. I think we are trying to formulate a
00:11:11
strategy on the model but I will tell you where we differentiate hugely differentiate. I think we have found the
00:11:18
answer that I hear everybody talking about. I am I am a huge believer that AI is not into a bubble and the reason I
00:11:26
believe in this I think we are one of the few companies that have found true value realization and this is really a
00:11:33
mind-blowing story. Um when I took on the s role for him so I had an option to say how do you run a large enterprise do
00:11:42
you run it the same old way where you have legacy systems in play you have hundreds of IT tools that do the job for
00:11:49
finance legal HR cyber security or you do something different what we have differentiated on while I'm excited
00:11:56
about the model is what we build on top of the model so um we will launch in October this year a platform we call
00:12:03
humane one it is truly the AI oper operating system for the enterprise. Imagine the um the era I believe Windows
00:12:11
was embedded in 1981. We all got taught that you use icons on the desktop. If you want to take a vacation, you go to
00:12:17
success factor or other HR tool. If you want finance, go to Oracle, SAP. If you want something else, there's another
00:12:24
tool, another application, another icon. Well, now we change this enterprise world. We're really intent driven
00:12:31
system, multi- aent orchestration system and its impact is unreal. what has happened in driving true value
00:12:38
realization. Um, at least in my company I could tell you it is remarkable the efficiencies
00:12:45
now that we have derived out of changing these legacy systems and maybe the biggest challenge that I had had nothing
00:12:53
to do with the technology nothing and this is maybe my own personal opinion about the struggles that companies going
00:12:59
to go through as they embrace AI into their operation. And it's the mindset, mentality, culture, organization. It's
00:13:05
underestimated effort. So, um, so yeah, between the model of what we build, but I I'm more excited about what we have on
00:13:12
top of the model. Let me ask you a point of question. You're in Saudi, there's an enormous
00:13:17
amount of energy, almost a surfate of energy. Do you have this unfair advantage where
00:13:22
if you need a vast amount of energy to throw at a compute problem, do you effectively get it for free or do you
00:13:30
have to pay for it as well? No, of course not. I mean, look, um, uh, even though it might seem like I I wish I
00:13:36
could get it for free. I that would that would change my business model dramatically. Um, so the
00:13:44
when I took this role, I think one of the key things I said, look, what can we really compete and what can we do to
00:13:50
offer to the world something that the world desperately needs today. I think everybody in this room maybe realize we
00:13:58
are really just at the beginning of what I would call the AI inferencing world. While the model training will continue
00:14:05
to evolve, but now as we move into accelerated compute, I think the demand is going to become much larger than it
00:14:12
exists today. So how do we and and what's the challenge? The challenge is really simple power. You know, how do
00:14:18
you really find power? So that's where I think Saudi Arabia has a big role to uh
00:14:22
to participate. And I was bullish enough to tell the world I said outside of the
00:14:26
United States, outside of China, I really think Saudi Arabia has a good shot to be the third largest country in
00:14:33
infrastructure. So um we have to go through processes to secure power from the uh ministry of energy through the
00:14:41
local electric company. I am treated as fairly as any other entity that comes to
00:14:47
the country. my rates, my tariff is equivalent to what Google would get, to what AWS get. But however, the energy
00:14:54
generation that exists in Saudi Arabia is just remarkable. I mean, I think um what I told many people um maybe Saudi
00:15:03
Arabia today led the world in energy exports via oil. we should look at an opportunity to lead the world through
00:15:09
energy exports via tokens, you know, and but that's really a a key area that I think we could differentiate
00:15:16
is the energy infrastructure. Let's talk a little bit about the talent pool there. The this was shocking to me
00:15:21
when I got there, but so many of the uh young people even up to Gen X, our generation, uh have been educated in the
00:15:28
west. In fact, the woman who we are in partnership with uh with Sonabble um has a MBA from Stanford and Oxford and all
00:15:38
these incredible schools and they've all come back after these incredible scholarships that are given uh by the
00:15:44
country. talk about the talent that has come back to Saudi and the application level level and Golden Visas as well
00:15:53
just how open they are to having companies set up shop there and there's a bit of a competition is there not
00:15:59
between you know DOA Dubai Abu Dhabi Riyad Bahrain there's a really great competition that's emerging for talent
00:16:08
and you've got the entire country all the nationals very engaged in starting companies
00:16:14
yeah So um I mean this is such an important point because I think this is um a key fact that people don't realize
00:16:22
yet. I didn't Yeah. Yeah. The if you look at it, you know, 30 years ago, the investment and the
00:16:28
strategy for Saudi Arabia to send many of their citizens abroad across the world to pursue degrees is really paying
00:16:36
off um you know in a in a really large way. Um again back into the example I mentioned about my um my models team I
00:16:46
have 40 PhD students uh not students 40 PhD scientists today in my team I sometimes honestly when I sit with them
00:16:54
I said I'm really maybe I don't have enough credentials to sit with you guys in the room but they're graduated from
00:17:01
uh yes some are for PhD from Stanford MIT Harvard Oxford you know from anywhere that you want they're really
00:17:09
have obtained now the foundation knowledge to really take to that next step. Now, when you talk about
00:17:15
competition, I mean, the beauty when they graduated, was it that they were thinking about staying in the US,
00:17:22
getting an OPT, staying, or was it this pull to go back and say, "Okay, we're now trained. Let's go back and help our
00:17:29
mother country." What What is the motivation of this? I think there's a couple things that
00:17:32
happened. I mean, I I mean, this is my own view and I talked to my colleagues in Saudi Arabia. I really think that
00:17:39
they had a sense of responsibility to take in the build process of what tomorrow is going to look like. Uh I
00:17:47
would have done the same if I was in their shoes. I would have went back and really helped into this uh this build
00:17:52
process. So um they learned a lot and mostly from I would say United States and uh UK and now they all came back
00:18:01
looking at the opportunity because the inflection point has happened. If you look at the fast-paced transformation,
00:18:09
it's an opportunity I don't think they want to miss. It's really changing rapidly.
00:18:12
How much of that maybe is a desire to work in the era of MBS and maybe you can use that as a jumping off point to tell
00:18:19
us what is it like to work with this person that's young and beloved? So, so a couple of things. I mean, look,
00:18:24
I I'll tell you my uh my honest opinion. I mean first of all the first meeting that we had with him um key observation
00:18:32
and takeaway his vision blew my mind. I don't think I have seen someone with such a bold vision towards what the
00:18:39
future looks like. His responsibility to the citizens of Saudi and the uh diversification and the transformation
00:18:46
initiatives that are happening is second to none. It's really really incredible.
00:18:51
Actually I was delayed yesterday. I was supposed to be here, but he the man doesn't sleep
00:18:57
really. I mean, he's he's on all the time uh thinking about initiatives that needs to be done and fasttracking them.
00:19:05
So, um everybody now is really rallied. If you go into Saudi Arabia today, one thing that is surprising, you take a
00:19:13
taxi cab or you go to a hotel or you talk to a government official, everybody is intertwined with the vision 2030
00:19:22
mission. everybody. So this is something that rallied the society around an idea
00:19:27
and the idea has incredible merits especially I would tell you and is it both the old and the young
00:19:33
it's I mean what I'm seeing now across the board even when I talk to the older generation or the younger generation
00:19:41
this mentality shift transformation has happened now I'm I'm not representing everybody I'm telling you the segments
00:19:47
I'm interacting with um I I see nothing but optimism but you guys know very well
00:19:53
better than me. This is such a key point. That was what I took away from when I started spending
00:19:57
time there over 3 years. I saw the change every year. The enthusiasm level reminded me of New York and San
00:20:03
Francisco in the '9s, early 2000s. The opportunity to build anything. The culture was on fire. You've got movies
00:20:12
and cinemas coming back and and all this great stuff happening. And they're so engaged and they want to learn how to
00:20:18
build businesses. And they've got this real, you know, the 2030 mark has inspired everybody to think, well, what
00:20:24
can what's possible? We we have this incredible energy business. Sure. But as they explained it to me, we can take
00:20:30
that energy business and over the next 5, 10, 20 years, we can transform this entire region and be a global leader.
00:20:37
And it's really inspiring. And and uh to add to your point, look back into your question about
00:20:42
competition. You know, this is really interesting. You see um there's a lot I have learned and I owe a lot for what I
00:20:49
learned in the US. Quite a bit a lot. Um I learned innovation here. When I moved
00:20:55
to India, I learned scale. When I moved to Japan, I learned precision and quality. You come to Saudi Arabia and
00:21:00
I'm learning optimism and vision truly. And um hopeful, you know, I I find it to be really
00:21:08
remarkable. I mean, that's I'm I'm living there almost full-time. Um and what I have done if you come to humane
00:21:15
office today in my opinion it is no different than a Silicon Valley office not at all. Oh yeah it.
00:21:22
So I encourage you come visit see how you mean from the basics of the basics how the building layout is how the open
00:21:30
office design is to remove barriers and thoughts mentalities and I want now really my team has to become product
00:21:37
creator not just a reseller. So that's very important. Tark, as you are building your infrastructure, there's
00:21:45
supply chain and strategic partnerships and relationships that I'm sure emerge here in the United States, but also in
00:21:51
China. And Saudi Arabia seems to be in this really kind of interesting position as a large energy supplier, as a large
00:21:58
partner in capital and now in building that could create tension between the rivalry, the global rivalry between the
00:22:04
US and China. How do you think about managing each of those two markets and how you establish relationships and
00:22:10
where do you align yourself? So if you if you see um how humane was launched and and I wish I could take a small
00:22:15
credit for this but u I've asked for one thing before President Trump came to visit um Saudi Arabia we should you know
00:22:24
please launch the company 3 p.m. core because we wanted to see ensure that the alignment that we are going after we're
00:22:32
going after really where the innovation is the talent that exists the infrastructure that exists and let's be
00:22:38
really realistic and truthful today the US is leading especially on the semiconductor side and we don't want to
00:22:45
miss this opportunity so if you see our partnership that we have done with AMD with um a startup called Grock uh Nvidia
00:22:53
Qualcomm it shows you clearly our commitment to this relationship and partnership and it's really deep not
00:23:01
only on the silicon side but the same thing you're going to hear very soon on the AI and the software application and
00:23:07
that's why humane to succeed really needs deeper engagement relationship I spend a lot of time with um with
00:23:16
startups in the US and um you know and as long as to be very honest with you the hope and the optimism I have and and
00:23:24
David and the team has been doing really a great job with this is our ability to
00:23:28
say we understand very very well the concerns that one might have. But if you see about my partners that we have
00:23:35
selected from software layer in the cloud to manage tenant management to the security on the data center to make sure
00:23:41
that these servers are secured. We will do everything that is required with the optimism that humane will be thought
00:23:48
through as a trusted supplier for um for the US. David Saxs, how important is the
00:23:55
American and the kingdom's relationship globally and for humanity in terms of the the president's uh agenda and his
00:24:04
prioritization? Well, it's been a critical relationship for the US and for Saudi Arabia since I think 1945, if not
00:24:12
before when uh the the founder of Saudi Arabia, the king Iban Sad met with uh our president, our king so to speak, FDR
00:24:22
on a battleship and they hammered out the foundation of the modern world which is the US would provide security for the
00:24:30
region in exchange for the steady flow of crude and that you know that was I FDR did that on his way back from Yalta
00:24:36
and people don't know as much about that as they do the Yaltta meeting but that was a very important understanding and
00:24:41
then the relationship's evolved over the last 80 years but what I can tell you we
00:24:44
I went with the president on the trip in May to the Middle East and number one like you said the business culture in
00:24:50
Saudi Arabia is very Americanized many of the the the Saudi elite have studied in the US second they want to have a
00:24:59
good relationship and a and a partnership with the United States there's nothing competitive at all all
00:25:04
about that relationship. And third, when it comes to high-tech and AI, they want
00:25:08
to be part of our technology ecosystem. When I got back to Washington, I was really surprised at how controversial it
00:25:14
was that we wanted to do business with the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia in particular. The way I see it is very
00:25:21
simple. Saudi Arabia is going to have data centers. Of course, uh, every sovereign country that can afford them
00:25:28
is going to have data centers. Is that going to be American technology or Chinese technology? It's basically going
00:25:33
to be our uh companies or it's going to be Huawei. It's binary. It's binary. And why would we want to
00:25:39
push any country into the arms of Huawei? Especially when their preference is to
00:25:43
work with America. Well, I think it's especially for two reasons. One is the proximity that that region has to 4
00:25:50
billion people. Because if you think about building data centers, ultimately inferences, there's a certain window of
00:25:55
time and you have to be under several hundred milliseconds. But if you do that and you draw that radius, you're
00:26:02
counting half the world's population. We we can't strategically ignore that. Otherwise, you'll be forced to do it
00:26:08
with somebody else. We'll let talk in a second, but just I think that these restrictions on the
00:26:12
region, they were placed in October of 2023. And at the time by previous administration, at the time that
00:26:19
happened, it was justified on the grounds that the US was the only game in town. We were the only ones who could
00:26:24
really make advanced semiconductors. So therefore, we could impose whatever restrictions we wanted. Nobody would
00:26:30
have a choice. But since then, if you're reading the headlines over the past few
00:26:33
months, it's all been about Huawei, Cambercon, uh, SMIC. China is rapidly advancing. Um, Dylan Patel from, um,
00:26:42
semi analysis just had a report. By next year, China is going to be making millions of chips. Admittedly, they're
00:26:48
not as good as American chips. But if we deny the rest of the world the ability to participate in the American tech
00:26:54
stack, then they will participate in the Chinese tech stack. And I think the question of what what we sell to China
00:27:00
will always be a complicated question for obvious reasons. But when it comes to the Middle East and the rest of the
00:27:04
world, I think it should be an easy question that as long as these countries are abiding by our security requirements
00:27:11
and they want to be partners and allies of the United States, we should allow them into the American tech ecosystem
00:27:17
because otherwise we're just creating a Huawei belt and road. Maybe uh one one uh important thing. Um we got approval
00:27:26
last year and and this is a really really important case study for you. When we looked at our business model,
00:27:31
actually the number we use is exactly 4.4 billion. 4.4. Sure. We could reach within the tolerance of
00:27:39
fiber latency that inferencing would become really still um ultra responsive. Um we got approval after a few months on
00:27:49
um a startup in the US and this is a classic example. I mean you could really validate what I'm going to tell you now.
00:27:54
We supported this US startup. look at where they where they are now today and what their valuation post engagement
00:28:00
with us. So we picked um at that time for inferencing Grock because I thought it was really an interesting startup
00:28:06
that could help us democratize the cost of inferencing out of um the data center
00:28:12
that we have deployed this in. Um we have about 19,000 uh of of their chips deployed overnight.
00:28:21
130 countries are using now this inferencing cluster. 5% of the traffic from Saudi, the rest is from abroad.
00:28:28
Why? Because we're able to offer differentiated inferencing costs and we offer to the world. Now keep in mind
00:28:35
what we also did for security guarantees. We said Grock cloud, you manage this. So now I don't have to
00:28:42
worry about KYC requirement. You follow US rules. I what I care about is I have revenue that I participate in.
00:28:50
And it was really a win-win for both of us. And I hope we'll repeat the same thing with uh with the deployment that
00:28:56
we're doing with Nvidia and uh AMD and then something really really exciting that we're going to do with Qualcomm on
00:29:01
the edge as well. Thank you so much for joining us and see you at Mamadori. Thank you very much. Thank you.
00:29:07
Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thanks. Thank you. I got a great schwarma place for us.
00:29:12
Thank you. We're in town.