Saudi Arabia Bet Boosts Amazon's AI Infrastructure Ambitions

Amazon's expansion into Saudi Arabia is gaining momentum as its cloud infrastructure region in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is on track for launch by December 2026. This development, announced at the LEAP conference in Riyadh, reaffirms a multibillion-dollar commitment first unveiled in March 2024 and adds fresh momentum to Amazon shares.

The shares have returned 10.6% in the year-to-date period, outpacing the Zacks Internet, Commerce industry and the Zacks Retail-Wholesale sector. The expansion of AWS' global infrastructure to 40 regions worldwide with the new Saudi region arrives alongside an expanded strategic collaboration with HUMAIN, a Public Investment Fund-owned AI company.

AWS and HUMAIN plan to deliver up to 50 megawatts of capacity in Saudi Arabia's first dedicated AI Zone by 2028, powered by AWS' custom Trainium chips and NVIDIA AI infrastructure. This buildout is one piece of a broader wave of AI announcements from Amazon's own newsroom through July and August 2026.

AWS recently expanded its chip and infrastructure partnership with NVIDIA to support next-generation AI workloads, while Anthropic's latest Claude models have been added to Amazon Bedrock, widening the platform's foundation-model lineup for enterprise customers. AWS also committed more than $500 million toward student cloud and AI training worldwide through a new Student Rewards program.