Humain, a Saudi AI company backed by the Public Investment Fund, unveiled humain-m3 on September 3, an Arabic-language model built on Chinese lab MiniMax Group Inc’s M3 model.

The launch comes as Saudi Arabia seeks more control over AI technology.

The model is free to download and customize, according to Humain.

It is available through Humain Node and expands the role of the Public Investment Fund-backed firm, which was launched earlier this year to build AI products and infrastructure.

MiniMax has also published M3 on Hugging Face, though the available listing did not specify its license or whether the model weights are fully open source.

Humain said humain-m3 performed best on average across seven public Arabic benchmarks, a claim that could not be independently verified from the reviewed materials.

The launch follows earlier Gulf Arabic model efforts predating Humain. The use of Chinese-origin AI models has also drawn scrutiny in markets including South Korea.

🔗 Source: Bloomberg

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