Luma AI opens Riyadh office, signs Publicis
Luma AI is opening a Riyadh office to support HUMAIN's Arabic-native model work and has become Publicis Groupe Middle East's preferred generative AI partner, strengthening its ties to Saudi Arabia's state-backed AI push.
Luma AI announced that it will open an office in Riyadh as its regional hub for the Middle East and North Africa. It also announced a partnership that names it Publicis Groupe Middle East's preferred generative AI technology partner across Saudi Arabia and the wider MENA region.
The office is meant to deepen Luma's partnership with HUMAIN, the AI company owned by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF). HUMAIN is also one of Luma's investors. Luma will support HUMAIN Create, HUMAIN's generative AI platform, which is developing what the companies call the first Saudi-built, Arabic-native foundation model. Through HUMAIN Create, Luma's models will be trained on Arabic-language and regional data. HUMAIN CEO Tareq Amin said the work is backed by compute from Project Halo, a 2GW AI supercluster under development in Saudi Arabia.
Luma plans to hire locally for AI and software engineering, go-to-market and forward-deployed creative and technical roles. The company did not give headcount, investment figures or an opening date.
Under the Publicis deal, which was made in collaboration with HUMAIN, Publicis Groupe Middle East will build Luma's generative video and multimodal models into its creative and production workflows. Publicis Groupe Middle East & Turkey has about 3,600 staff across eight markets and is headquartered in Dubai. The announcement did not disclose financial terms or the length of the partnership.
Luma is best known for its Dream Machine platform and Ray3 video model. Its other backers include Andreessen Horowitz, Amazon, AMD Ventures and NVIDIA.