Snowflake, the US company that stores and analyses data for 790 of the world's 2,000 largest companies, will invest SR1.1 billion ($300 million) in Saudi Arabia through 2030.
It signed the commitment with the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, the company said on Tuesday. It first flagged the plan at the LEAP tech conference in Riyadh.
The deal
Regional base. Riyadh is already Snowflake's headquarters for the Middle East, Turkey and Africa, set up in 2024.
Local cloud. Two more Snowflake cloud regions will open in the second half of 2026, alongside its existing setup on Google Cloud's Dammam region, keeping Saudi customers' data inside the country.
Skills. Its "One Million Minds" program aims to train up to 25,000 Saudis in data and AI over five years, with a university track, Snowflake Academia, alongside it.
Who is Snowflake
A heavyweight. Snowflake made $4.7 billion in revenue in the year to January 2026, up 29%, and has more than 13,300 customers. 733 of them spend over $1 million a year.
At the centre of US AI. It signed a $200 million partnership with Anthropic in December 2025 to bring Claude into its products, and a $200 million deal with OpenAI in February 2026 to offer its GPT models.
A bridge. It runs on all three big US clouds: Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.
The big picture
Snowflake joins a queue of US tech heavyweights putting money into the kingdom's AI build-out, much of it through PIF-backed Humain.
Amazon Web Services: more than $5 billion for an "AI Zone" in Riyadh with Humain, holding around 150,000 AI chips.
AMD: pledged up to $10 billion with Humain in May 2025, then formed a joint venture with Cisco and Humain to build 1 gigawatt of AI capacity.
Nvidia: supplying Humain with its most advanced chips.
xAI: planning a 500-megawatt data centre with Humain.
Microsoft and Google: building or running cloud regions in the kingdom.
Why it matters
Saudi Arabia wants its data processed at home, and it wants the world's best AI tools to come to it. Each US firm that sets up locally makes that model more credible.
Demand is there. AI use among Saudi businesses rose 20% in 2025, according to the General Authority for Statistics.
For banks, hospitals and government agencies, a local Snowflake region means they can use AI on sensitive data without sending it abroad.
