Saudi Arabia’s Humain and Qualcomm unveil AI laptop

• Companies present ‘agentic AI PC’
• Device-first computing gains traction
• Qualcomm deepens Saudi ties

Qualcomm is deepening its relationship with Saudi state AI company Humain across data centre infrastructure, local engineering and a personal computer it says will change how people interact with technology.

The US chip designer said the companies have developed an “agentic AI PC” with an “intent-based” interface.

Instead of navigating between applications, users tell the computer what they want to achieve, and AI agents carry out multiple tasks while learning their preferences over time.

Wassim Chourbaji, Qualcomm’s president for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, told AGBI: “The world of apps as we know it today is going to change completely. It’s not an if, but a when.”

The laptop will run AI models directly, with Chourbaji citing booking travel, preparing presentations and completing financial work as everyday tasks it could transform.

Powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X2 Elite platform, the computer will deliver up to 80 trillion AI operations per second. Chourbaji said it would have up to 22 hours of battery life.

Humain, owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, has spent more than 12 months developing the Horizon Ultra with Qualcomm. It was unveiled at the Leap technology conference in Riyadh on Monday and will be available to enterprise customers from September 20.

Humain CEO Tareq Amin, who gave an early view of the computer on LinkedIn last week, said: “The PC is becoming an intelligence platform.

“We are making intelligence native to the device, not simply something the device connects to.”

Chourbaji said the computer would eventually be available to consumers. The companies have not said when or at what price.

Engineers from the two companies worked together across hardware, software and design. The first version will run on Windows, while Humain plans its own operating system in 2027.

Edge of reason

Qualcomm has built much of its business around computing at the “edge”, where processing takes place on devices such as smartphones, computers and cars, rather than being sent to a remote data centre.

It is expanding into what it calls “hybrid AI”, where computing is divided between devices and data centres depending on the task.

Chourbaji, originally from Lebanon, described this as a “continuum of compute”, stretching from smartphones, PCs, cars and robots to data centres requiring hundreds of megawatts of power.

“There will be AI everywhere, and AI will naturally go to the best compute,” he said.

“Some things you would just do at the edge, some things in the data centre, and then you orchestrate between edge and cloud.”

Qualcomm is also expanding into AI data centre infrastructure with Humain. Adobe is moving its regional AI data-captioning workloads onto Humain’s Saudi-hosted infrastructure, using Qualcomm AI accelerators.

The deployment will keep the data and computing in the kingdom, with Adobe set to become the first global software company to move AI workloads onto Humain’s platform.

The US company is increasing engineering inside the kingdom. Its new operation at Humain’s Majdoul Tower in Riyadh combines experienced Qualcomm engineers from the US, Europe and India with Saudi engineers.

The Saudi team is “very motivated”, Chourbaji said, describing them as “great, diverse talent”.

Qualcomm is also working with Saudi Aramco, which Chourbaji described as a “very powerful and strategic partner” in digital transformation and AI.

The chip designer is applying technology developed through its smartphone business across PCs, vehicles, industrial systems and AI infrastructure.

“We are at an inflection point here,” Chourbaji said. “It means industries are shifting and you need a new kind of innovation.”

Saeed Al-Dobas, Humain’s executive vice-president of AI infrastructure, said the relationship with Qualcomm went “beyond a business transaction” and he had invited Qualcomm’s engineers to work alongside his team.

“I always told them, my office is yours,” Al-Dobas told guests at the launch of Qualcomm’s offices on Sunday.