Saudi AI company HUMAIN, a subsidiary of the Public Investment Fund, has partnered with Napster to develop Arabic-speaking AI digital employees for government and private-sector organisations across the Middle East and North Africa.
The partnership will combine HUMAIN’s IQ platform, Allam large language model and HUMAIN Voice technologies with Napster’s visual presence, smart persona and multimodal agent infrastructure. The planned digital employees will communicate through voice, video and conversational interfaces, while retaining interaction memory.
According to the announcement, HUMAIN will provide Napster with secure API access to selected services, including Allam for text generation, summarisation and function calling. The agreement also covers HUMAIN Voice’s real-time speech-to-text and text-to-speech tools, including support for multiple Arabic dialects.
Napster CEO John Acunto said AI platforms built primarily for English have not adequately served Arabic-speaking markets, adding that linguistic fluency and cultural understanding are important for building user trust. HUMAIN CEO Tarek Amin said AI systems should be designed around local languages and market needs, with technology developed in Saudi Arabia capable of expanding into other markets.
Napster plans to offer the capabilities to its existing government and private-sector clients in Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern markets. The company also plans to launch additional regional initiatives and applications during 2026.
Source: EntArabi
