From Riyadh to the Heart of the World: The Inspiring Journey of Dr. Hani Najm

A Surgeon Who Touches Hearts — Literally and Figuratively

In the bustling city of **CHICAGO**, exciting news is resonating across the medical community: *Saudi cardiothoracic surgeon Dr. Hani Najm* has been named vice president of the esteemed **American College of Cardiology (ACC)** — a role he will officially assume in March. Later next year, he will step into the role of president, becoming only the *third surgeon* in the ACC’s 75-year history to hold such a prestigious position.  

Dr. Najm’s journey is far from ordinary. A pediatric and congenital heart surgeon of exceptional skill, he is celebrated not only for pioneering life-saving surgical procedures but also for revolutionizing care for the tiniest and most vulnerable patients — infants born with critical heart defects. Among his groundbreaking achievements is the invention of a unique heart valve for infants, one that grows with the child, eliminating the need for multiple risky surgeries. This innovation alone has changed the trajectory of countless young lives.  

Miracles in the Making: Groundbreaking Surgery Before Birth

In one of the most extraordinary medical feats of recent years, Dr. Najm successfully operated on a fetus inside the mother’s womb to remove a life-threatening tumor. At just five months into the pregnancy, he opened the mother’s abdomen, then her uterus, and finally the tiny chest of the unborn child to carefully remove the tumor. The surgery saved the baby from certain heart failure, leading to a full-term delivery of a healthy newborn.  

Such courageous and unprecedented procedures are a testament not only to Dr. Najm’s expertise but also to his unwavering commitment to his patients. His successes, however, are not solely the result of his personal dedication. Dr. Najm credits the unwavering support of the Saudi government for his achievements. He proudly acknowledges that he is a *product of Saudi education and vision*, underscoring how the nation’s investments in human capital are shaping global excellence.  

From Riyadh to the Cleveland Clinic: A Vision Fueled by Support

Born and educated in Saudi Arabia, Dr. Najm began his medical journey at King Saud University’s medical school before earning a scholarship to train in Canada. Over a decade, he honed his skills in general surgery, cardiothoracic surgery, and pediatric heart surgery, while also obtaining a master’s degree in cardiovascular sciences. This rigorous preparation equipped him to provide world-class patient care and conduct research that pushes medical boundaries.  

After returning to Saudi Arabia, Dr. Najm served as deputy chairman at the King Abdulaziz Cardiac Center in Riyadh, dedicating 17 years to serving his community. His exceptional track record eventually led to his recruitment by the globally renowned Cleveland Clinic, where he now serves as executive co-director of the Pediatric and Adult Congenital Heart Center. His leadership and passion continue to impact patients from around the world, while also inspiring the next generation of medical professionals.  

A Legacy of Excellence and Hope

In recognition of his contributions, Dr. Najm was honored with the **Great Arab Minds Award** in medicine — often referred to as the “Arab Nobel Prize.” His story is a remarkable blueprint of what can be achieved when talent, opportunity, and vision combine. More than a celebrated surgeon, Dr. Najm is a bridge between nations, showcasing how Saudi Arabia’s investment in education and research benefits the global community.  

From delicate infant heart valves to daring fetal surgeries, his work reminds us that medicine is as much about courage as it is about precision. And as he prepares to take on leadership in the American College of Cardiology, the world watches with anticipation, knowing that Dr. Hani Najm’s next chapter will be as inspiring and life-changing as the path he has already walked.  

From Desert Sands to Data Clouds: How HUMAIN and NVIDIA Are Building the Nerve System of Global AI

In Washington, D.C. – HUMAIN, a PIF company delivering global full-stack artificial intelligence solutions, today announced an expanded strategic partnership with NVIDIA, with plans to deploy up to 600,000 of NVIDIA’s latest AI infrastructure technologies over the next three years, including NVIDIA GB300 platforms. This announcement is more than a routine tech update; it is a vivid glimpse into how the next era of artificial intelligence will be powered, governed, and experienced.

As the world steadily shifts into an AI-first reality, this partnership feels like the moment when the lights come on in a vast new digital city. With every rack of GPUs, every fiber link, and every data center HUMAIN launches, the global AI landscape becomes more interconnected, more sovereign, and more ambitious. And yet, at its heart, this story is as much about people and culture as it is about compute and clusters.

A New Continental Spine for AI Infrastructure

The announcement in Washington, D.C. marks a turning point in how we think about AI infrastructure. Instead of scattered, isolated compute silos, HUMAIN and NVIDIA are sketching a continuous, high-density backbone that stretches from Saudi Arabia to the United States. Over the next three years, HUMAIN plans to deploy up to 600,000 of NVIDIA’s latest AI infrastructure technologies, including NVIDIA GB300 platforms. This massive rollout reads like the blueprint for a new kind of industrial revolution, one built not on steel and steam but on data and intelligence.

In addition to establishing NVIDIA-powered data centers in Saudi Arabia, HUMAIN is expanding its operations to AI data centers in the United States powered by NVIDIA AI. These facilities are not just warehouses of machines; they are carefully engineered ecosystems for training large-scale models, running secure inference, and integrating sovereign-cloud capabilities. With each deployment, HUMAIN weaves new threads into a global fabric of AI compute, ensuring that nations and enterprises can innovate with both power and independence.

Furthermore, this is not a standalone move. The deepened partnership is aligned with several other announcements at the forum, reinforcing the companies’ shared commitment to accelerating sovereign AI infrastructure and next-generation compute. These developments build on the foundation established during HUMAIN’s launch in May, where the NVIDIA collaboration was first unveiled as part of HUMAIN’s mission to deliver end-to-end AI solutions and global-scale compute capability. Step by step, HUMAIN is evolving from a visionary concept into one of the central engines of global AI progress.

The Rise of Sovereign AI – From the U.S. Heartland to the Arabian Peninsula

At the core of this expansion lies a powerful idea: sovereign AI. Nations are no longer satisfied with just accessing AI; they want to shape it, secure it, and embed it into their strategic future. HUMAIN is forming a new strategic partnership with Global AI, an American sovereign AI infrastructure company, to develop large-scale AI data centers and compute capacity in the United States powered by NVIDIA technologies, including NVIDIA GB300 AI infrastructure connected with NVIDIA Quantum-X800 InfiniBand networking. This combination brings together raw computational strength and ultra-fast, low-latency networking, ideal for cutting-edge model training and inference.

The new U.S. campus will be designed for high-density compute and advanced AI workloads, enabling large-scale model training, secure inference operations, and sovereign-cloud integration. Together, these capabilities will create globally competitive infrastructure for enterprises, public-sector entities, and frontier-model developers. In other words, this is not just another data center; it is a launchpad for the next generation of AI-native organizations, from research labs to startup ventures.

Simultaneously, HUMAIN’s ambitions extend across the Atlantic and deep into the Arabian Peninsula. As part of a parallel agreement also announced today, HUMAIN and xAI will jointly develop a network of world-class data centers in Saudi Arabia, anchored by a flagship 500 MW+ facility, which will expand xAI’s supercluster footprint. The infrastructure represents xAI’s first major large-scale deployment outside the United States, as HUMAIN’s partner in launching the approximately 18,000 NVIDIA GB300 GPUs in the first cluster announced earlier this year. This will support the training of future Grok models and serve as a critical inference outpost. Altogether, these moves reinforce Saudi Arabia’s intent to stand at the forefront of AI, not just as a consumer, but as a global producer and innovator.

The “AI Zone” in Riyadh – A New Hub of Digital Gravity

To further accelerate this transformation, HUMAIN is expanding its collaboration with AWS through a new AI infrastructure partnership announced today. Under this agreement, AWS will deploy and manage up to 150,000 NVIDIA GPUs within a dedicated “AI Zone” in Riyadh. This AI Zone is not merely a technical facility; it is envisioned as a living, breathing ecosystem where developer communities, enterprises, and public institutions converge around shared AI infrastructure.

The AI Zone will be purpose-built to support cutting-edge AI training and inference workloads, with NVIDIA’s GPUs delivering a broad range of compute-intensive capabilities. From foundational models to highly specialized domain applications, the Riyadh AI Zone will act as a gravitational center for innovation, pulling in talent, research, and investment from across the region and beyond. As a result, what might seem like a local project becomes, in practice, a global node in the emerging network of sovereign AI centers.

This integrated approach underscores HUMAIN’s strategy: rather than building isolated islands of compute, it orchestrates interconnected hubs that can collaborate, share insights, and accelerate each other’s progress. According to HUMAIN CEO Tareq Amin, “Our continued partnership with NVIDIA is central to HUMAIN’s mission. We are working together to advance global AI infrastructure. By expanding our compute capacity in both the U.S. and Saudi Arabia with the latest NVIDIA AI infrastructure, HUMAIN, and our partners at Global AI, xAI, and AWS, secure an even stronger strategic foothold. This integrated presence gives us the strength and scale to fuel the future of global AI innovation.”

AI as the New Electricity – A Global Vision Takes Shape 

Underpinning all these developments is a striking analogy from Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA: “AI is essential infrastructure — like electricity, every industry will use it, and every country will build it. Saudi Arabia intends to be a leading global AI hub. With NVIDIA-powered infrastructure deployed across the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, HUMAIN and its partners are building the innovation engine for the new industrial revolution.”

This comparison to electricity is more than a metaphor. Just as power grids once redefined how cities, factories, and communities operated, the expanding AI infrastructure that HUMAIN and NVIDIA are building is redefining how innovation happens. Every sector—energy, manufacturing, logistics, aviation, smart cities, and even large-scale infrastructure development—will increasingly rely on AI to design, simulate, optimize, and operate complex systems. Therefore, countries that invest now in robust, sovereign AI infrastructure are effectively laying down the power lines of the 21st century.

Moreover, the HUMAIN–NVIDIA collaboration is deliberately structured to be global in scope yet local in sensitivity. By combining sovereign AI strategies with global-scale compute, HUMAIN enables nations and organizations to innovate responsibly, securely, and at scale. The result is a future where AI is both widely available and carefully governed, both powerful and accountable.

Giving Arabic a Digital Superpower – HUMAIN Chat and ALLAM 

While infrastructure may be the backbone of this story, language and culture are its heart. As part of the companies’ expanded collaboration, HUMAIN will use NVIDIA Nemotron open technologies to train HUMAIN Chat, an Arabic conversational AI app powered by HUMAIN’s ALLAM large language model. HUMAIN Chat is built to bring AI to the world’s more than 400 million Arabic speakers so that people can create, learn, and connect in their own language, culture, and context.

This is significant for several reasons. First, it signals a shift away from a monolingual AI universe dominated by English. Instead, it embraces the richness of regional languages and identities. Second, it shows how sovereign AI infrastructure can directly address local needs—supporting education systems, government services, media, and creative industries in Arabic-speaking countries. Finally, it underlines HUMAIN’s belief that AI should not just be technically advanced, but culturally aware and socially relevant.

In practical terms, the use of NVIDIA Nemotron open models provides HUMAIN with a flexible and powerful foundation for training and fine-tuning HUMAIN Chat. This allows the model to capture nuances of dialect, context, and cultural reference that are often lost in generic, one-size-fits-all systems. Over time, users will not just interact with a machine; they will feel understood—on their terms, in their language, and through their stories.

Building a Planet of Digital Twins – Giga-Projects and Physical AI

Beyond conversational AI, the HUMAIN–NVIDIA partnership is reaching into the physical world through one of the most ambitious visions in technology today: Connected Digital Twins. The partnership expansion includes building one of the world’s most advanced Connected Digital Twin ecosystems, including Giga-Projects for economic development, powering next-generation capabilities across energy, manufacturing, smart cities, logistics, aviation, and large-scale infrastructure development.

Under the partnership, HUMAIN will integrate NVIDIA Omniverse libraries with its national AI stack, combining HUMAIN’s advanced compute infrastructure, cutting-edge foundation models, and AI agents with NVIDIA’s end-to-end digital-twin and simulation technologies. Imagine entire cities that can be simulated before they are built, logistics networks that can be stress-tested before they are deployed, and energy systems that can be optimized before they go live. This is physical AI in action—where virtual models guide real-world decisions at massive scale.

As these Giga-Projects come to life, they will serve as living laboratories for the future of urban design, mobility, and sustainability. Developers, planners, and policymakers will be able to experiment safely in high-fidelity virtual environments, finding smarter, more resilient solutions before committing resources on the ground. Consequently, what once took years of trial and error can now be compressed into accelerated cycles of simulation, insight, and implementation.

Toward a Secure, Scalable, and Responsible AI Future

All of these initiatives—sovereign AI data centers, superclusters, AI Zones, Arabic-language models, and digital twin Giga-Projects—are guided by HUMAIN’s broader strategy. The expansion of the HUMAIN–NVIDIA collaboration aligns with HUMAIN’s global strategy to deliver sovereign, secure, and scalable AI compute. With NVIDIA’s latest AI infrastructure and platform innovations at its core, HUMAIN is positioned to advance full-stack AI capabilities across critical industries, including public sector, enterprise, research, and media, and to enable nations and organizations to innovate responsibly, securely, and at scale.

Ultimately, this story is about more than hardware and software. It is about designing a future in which AI is a shared resource, a strategic asset, and a cultural bridge. It is about making sure that when AI reshapes our world, it does so in ways that respect sovereignty, celebrate diversity, and unlock human potential.

As the sun sets over Riyadh’s deserts and rises over data centers in the United States, a new kind of global infrastructure is quietly humming to life. In that hum, you can almost hear the first notes of a new era—one where intelligence flows as freely and powerfully as electricity once did, lighting up not just cities and factories, but ideas, languages, and dreams.

Shaping the Future of Critical Minerals: How Riyadh’s New Rare Earth Hub Could Change the World

 

In the heart of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, a powerful new chapter in global industry is quietly beginning. The Saudi Arabian Mining Company (“Maaden”, 1211 on the Saudi Exchange) has signed a binding term sheet with MP Materials Corp. (“MP Materials”) (NYSE: MP), backed by the United States Department of War (DoW), to build and operate a cutting-edge rare earth refining and separation facility in the Kingdom. This ambitious joint venture is more than just another industrial project; it is a bold move to reshape critical mineral supply chains and strengthen strategic alliances across continents.

The agreement is closely tied to a broader strategic framework for cooperation on securing uranium, metals, permanent magnets, and critical minerals supply chains, signed between the United States and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in Washington D.C. earlier this week. As a result, this initiative not only reflects corporate ambition but also underscores a deep geopolitical partnership aimed at ensuring energy transition, technological advancement, and economic resilience.

A Vision Takes Shape in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, has long been a symbol of transformation, and this new rare earth facility continues that tradition. Following initial discussions between Maaden and MP Materials, announced earlier this year, the two companies are now moving from exploration to execution. They are joining forces to design a central hub for processing, refining, and separation of rare earth elements—materials that are essential to everything from electric vehicles and wind turbines to advanced defense systems and high-tech electronics.

The facility will be operated by Maaden, drawing on MP Materials’ industry-leading technical expertise. This collaboration blends Maaden’s strong presence, scale, and deep local roots with MP Materials’ specialized know-how in rare earths. Together, they are building more than an industrial plant; they are establishing a platform for innovation, value creation, and long-term collaboration in one of the most strategically important sectors of the future.

Moreover, the project is envisioned as a magnet—quite literally and figuratively—for global feedstock. It will leverage both Saudi and international sources of rare earth-containing materials, turning Riyadh into a major international anchor for value-added downstream processing. In doing so, it aims to become a crucial contributor to a secure and globally integrated critical minerals ecosystem.

Inside the Joint Venture: Strategic Stakes and Shared Ambitions 

At the core of this initiative lies a carefully balanced joint venture structure. Under the agreement, MP Materials and the DoW, through a joint venture, will hold a targeted equity position of 49% in the project. Meanwhile, Maaden will hold no less than 51%, reflecting its leading role and Saudi Arabia’s strategic commitment to this sector. This ownership structure ensures that the Kingdom remains in the driver’s seat while still welcoming international expertise and capital.

Transitioning from concept to reality, this project also highlights how industry and government can work together for mutual benefit. Bob Wilt, CEO of Maaden, emphasized that this joint venture is a significant step forward in the development of the global critical minerals sector. According to him, the initiative is underpinned by the support of Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Energy and the Ministry of Industry and Mineral Resources. His words reflect pride in Maaden’s role as Saudi Arabia’s national mining champion and reinforce the company’s ambition to make mining and minerals an integral pillar of the Kingdom’s diversified economy.

On the other side of the partnership, James Litinsky, Founder, Chairman & CEO of MP Materials, highlighted the honor of being asked by the U.S. government to partner on a project of such magnitude and importance for America and its allies. He pointed out that by combining MP Materials’ technical expertise with the strategic vision of the U.S. Department of War and Maaden’s capabilities and scale, the “pieces are in place to fundamentally strengthen and diversify the supply chain.” His statement underscores a shared understanding: this is not a short-term deal but a long-term strategic move to secure access to critical materials in an increasingly complex world.

Building a New Global Anchor for Critical Minerals 

Rare earth elements may be hidden from everyday view, but they are everywhere in modern life. They power the motors in electric cars, help generate clean energy in wind turbines, and enable the miniaturization and performance of advanced electronics. Consequently, whoever controls and refines these materials holds a key to the future of technology, industry, and defense.

With this new facility in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Maaden and MP Materials intend to create a robust, reliable hub for rare earth processing. Rather than exporting raw materials or depending on a single global source for refined products, this venture aims to localize and diversify critical steps in the supply chain. As a result, manufacturers across continents could gain a more stable and transparent source of rare earth products, reducing bottlenecks and mitigating geopolitical risks.

Furthermore, by positioning Riyadh as a central processing hub, the project integrates Saudi Arabia into the most advanced layers of the global minerals value chain. It moves the Kingdom beyond simple extraction and into high-value refining, separation, and downstream processing. Over time, this could spark the development of related industries, such as magnet manufacturing, advanced materials research, and clean energy technology, turning the facility into a catalyst for broader industrial and technological ecosystems.

A New Era of Collaboration and Strategic Resilience 

Looking ahead, this joint venture signals a new era of collaboration between Saudi Arabia, the United States, and their allies. It aligns political will, industrial capability, and technical expertise in service of shared goals: energy transition, technological leadership, and secure supply chains. As global demand for electric vehicles, renewable energy, and advanced electronics continues to rise, the importance of stable rare earth supplies will only grow.

Therefore, this initiative is more than an industrial project in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. It is a statement of intent, a declaration that the Kingdom and its partners are ready to invest, innovate, and collaborate to build a more resilient and diversified future. With Maaden at the helm, supported by MP Materials and the DoW, the rare earth refining and separation hub in Riyadh may well become one of the most influential anchors of the emerging critical minerals ecosystem.

In the end, as the world moves steadily toward cleaner energy and smarter technologies, the story unfolding in Riyadh is a reminder: the future is built not just on ideas, but on the elements that make those ideas possible. And now, those elements are finding a new home—and a new purpose—in the heart of Saudi Arabia.