
Microsoft and HUMAIN announce long-term strategic collaboration to enable AI transformation in Saudi Arabia and beyond
Manal Saleh
Long-Term Strategic Collaboration Between Microsoft and HUMAIN with Plans to Bring ALLAM to Microsoft Foundry and M365 Copilot ecosystem, Alongside Forward Deployed Engineers (FDEs) Providing Hands-On AI Deployment.
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – 26th
August 2026 – HUMAIN, a PIF company delivering full-stack
artificial intelligence capabilities globally, today announced the first
milestone in a long-term strategic collaboration with Microsoft.
The collaboration will initially focus on two areas: working
to bring HUMAIN’s ALLAM models to Microsoft’s AI ecosystem and bringing
together HUMAIN’s AI experts with Microsoft’s Forward Deployed Engineers (FDEs)
to work directly with organizations to support the identification, development and
deployment of high-value AI solutions across Microsoft technologies.
The collaboration builds
on Microsoft's AI platform – including Microsoft 365 Copilot Microsoft Foundry
and others – and HUMAIN's AI capabilities across Arabic language models and AI applications. Together, the companies will initially
focus on helping organizations accelerate AI adoption
through
Arabic-language AI capabilities and hands-on engineering support, while
exploring opportunities to deepen
the collaboration across additional areas over time.
The companies intend to make ALLAM available through
Microsoft Foundry, giving developers and enterprises access to HUMAIN’s Arabic
language models within Microsoft’s AI ecosystem. Organizations could use models
to build, customize and deploy AI applications and agents designed to support
Arabic-language and regional business requirements.
Through Microsoft M365 Copilot,
organizations would be able to create mission-critical specialized agents that
leverage ALLAM’s Arabic-language capabilities in productivity and business
workflows. ALLAM represents the first technology milestone planned under the
collaboration and provides an initial foundation for broader collaboration between
HUMAIN’s AI capabilities and Microsoft’s platforms.
As part of the collaboration, HUMAIN’s AI experts and
Microsoft’s Forward Deployed Engineers will work alongside Microsoft teams and
customers across Microsoft’s AI ecosystem. Their role will extend beyond ALLAM,
providing hands-on engineering support to organizations implementing AI
solutions across a range of Microsoft technologies and customer environments.
Working directly alongside customer teams, HUMAIN and
Microsoft’s engineers will help identify high-value use cases, integrate AI
into existing workflows, configure and optimize deployments, and support the
transition from experimentation towards mission-critical, production-scale
implementation.
This co-engineering model combines Microsoft’s
enterprise AI platforms with HUMAIN’s applied engineering capabilities, helping
customers address the operational, technical and organizational requirements
involved in deploying AI at scale and accelerate the path from AI
experimentation to real business value.
“This collaboration begins
with plans to bring ALLAM to a number of key Microsoft AI solutions, and this
is just the first step,” said Tareq Amin, Chief Executive Officer of HUMAIN. “Over
the coming months, HUMAIN and Microsoft intend to introduce a much broader set
of capabilities that expand how organizations build, deploy, and scale AI. What
you'll see at LEAP is the next generation of enterprise AI integration. By
combining Microsoft's global platform with HUMAIN's AI capabilities and
forward-deployed engineering expertise, we're creating practical solutions that
help enterprises accelerate AI adoption and deliver real business impact. This
announcement is only the beginning.”
"AI delivers the greatest value when it becomes part of the way
people work every day,"said Brad
Smith, Vice Chair and President of Microsoft. "By combining
Microsoft's trusted AI platform with HUMAIN's Arabic AI capabilities, we're
helping organizations across Saudi Arabia build AI that understands local
language and context while meeting the security and governance requirements of
enterprise and public sector customers."
“What’s exciting about this collaboration is that it brings together the capabilities organizations need to put AI to work,” said Naim Yazbeck, President, Middle East and
Africa, Microsoft. “In Saudi Arabia, we’re already seeing the
conversation move quickly from AI ambition to AI at scale. Bringing together
Arabic AI capabilities, hands-on engineering expertise and the tools people use every day can help organizations
turn AI opportunities into practical solutions, while building capability here in the Kingdom that has
relevance across the wider region.”
Looking ahead, Microsoft and HUMAIN intend to
explore opportunities to deepen their collaboration across additional
areas of AI,
including productivity, devices, models and infrastructure, as well as joint go-to-market initiatives. These
areas would build on the initial collaboration around ALLAM and forward-deployed engineering as
the companies explore how their respective technologies and capabilities can support responsible AI adoption across Saudi
Arabia and the broader Middle East and Africa.








