HUMAIN and EY Build Saudi Arabia's First AI-Native BPO Service
· Cortex Solutions
HUMAIN has engaged EY MENA to build Saudi Arabia's first AI-native business process outsourcing service on its agentic AI platform. What it means for firms.
HUMAIN, the PIF company that delivers full-stack artificial intelligence capabilities, announced in Riyadh on September 30, 2026 that it has engaged EY MENA to develop Saudi Arabia's first AI-native business process outsourcing (BPO) service.
The announcement, published as a press release by EY, describes a new category of AI-enabled business services that combines intelligent agents, automation, advanced analytics and human expertise. That is a different model from traditional outsourcing, which relies mainly on large teams of people to carry out repetitive work.
What was agreed
According to the release, HUMAIN will provide the underlying AI technologies, infrastructure and agentic ecosystem, while EY will contribute functional expertise, industry knowledge and go-to-market experience, and support the development and commercialization of HUMAIN's solutions.
The engagement builds on an existing relationship between the two organizations and supports HUMAIN ONE, HUMAIN's integrated agentic AI platform for AI-enabled workflows, agents and automation.
The release lists three goals for the service:
- Reduce operational complexity inside enterprises.
- Improve productivity and accelerate digital transformation.
- Let organizations get more from their existing technology investments instead of replacing them.
Notably, the release contains no financial figures, no contract value and no launch timeline, so it is too early to judge the service's scale or pricing.
What the executives said
Tareq Amin, Chief Executive Officer of HUMAIN, said: "AI is redefining what enterprises are capable of, not just how they operate." Raj Sharma, EY Global Managing Partner for Growth and Innovation, said that "competitive advantage will come not simply from the technology itself, but from how it is applied with trust, expertise and confidence." Abdulaziz Al-Sowailim, EY MENA Chairman and CEO, said the agreement "is rooted in a shared goal to redefine AI-powered business transformation."
EY has operated in the region since 1923 and has more than 8,500 people across 27 offices in 14 countries, according to the same release.
The wider context: a busy month for HUMAIN
The deal caps a busy September for HUMAIN. On September 3, at LEAP in Riyadh, the company unveiled humain-m3, an Arabic language model commissioned by HUMAIN and delivered by MiniMax. It is a 428-billion-parameter mixture-of-experts model that was further pre-trained on more than one trillion tokens of Arabic-native content. It is available as a research and evaluation preview through HUMAIN Node, and HUMAIN says it expects to release the weights under the MiniMax Community License after safety training and alignment.
On September 7, Arab News published an Asharq Bloomberg report that HUMAIN's CEO had announced a search for a specialized team to prepare a potential public offering. No timetable or size was given; the company had previously pointed to 2029 for listings in Saudi Arabia and New York.
What this means for Saudi businesses
The key signal is that agentic AI is moving from pilots to operating models sold as a service. When organizations of HUMAIN's and EY's size package agent-based outsourcing, processes such as customer service, finance operations, procurement and HR become realistic candidates for intelligent automation in the local market.
Real value, however, starts with a company's own readiness rather than with buying a service. Practical steps we recommend:
- Document current processes clearly: who does what, when, and with which data.
- Clean up data and connect systems; an AI agent cannot succeed on top of scattered information.
- Start with one repetitive, measurable process before scaling.
- Keep human review for sensitive decisions, which is exactly the blend of agents and human expertise the announcement describes.
- Respect personal data protection requirements whenever customer data is exposed to automated systems.
At Cortex Solutions we work with Saudi companies on precisely this stage: mapping processes, integrating systems, and building custom AI agents and automation around each organization's needs, whether they end up on large platforms such as HUMAIN ONE or on solutions built specifically for them.
Sources
- EY (press release) — https://www.ey.com/en_bh/newsroom/2026/09/humain-engages-ey-mena-to-develop-saudi-arabia-s-first-ai-native-business-process-outsourcing-service
- PR Newswire (humain-m3 announcement) — http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/humain-unveils-humain-m3-a-frontier-arabic-language-model-developed-by-minimax-in-research-preview-on-humain-node-302869158.html
- Arab News / Asharq Bloomberg — https://www.arabnews.com/business/from-launch-to-ipo-how-saudi-ai-firm-humain-grew-in-16-months-3000770