LEAP 2026: HUMAIN will replace Windows with its own oS on the Horizon Ultra in 2027

HUMAIN launched Horizon Ultra at LEAP 2026 in Riyadh on Monday, an AI PC designed with Qualcomm Technologies and built on the Snapdragon X2 Elite platform, after more than 12 months of design and development. The machine goes on sale to business customers on 20 September running Microsoft Windows, and the next version in the line, arriving in 2027, will run HUMAIN OS, an operating environment the Public Investment Fund company is developing itself.

Tareq Amin, CEO of HUMAIN, set out the reasoning behind the two-stage release. "The PC is becoming an intelligence platform," he said. "For the past 12 months, HUMAIN and Qualcomm Technologies have been designing for that future by bringing CPU, GPU and NPU together so increasingly powerful AI can run directly on the device. Today at LEAP, we are showing what that future looks like. We begin by capitalising on our partnership with Microsoft, and in 2027 we take the next step with HUMAIN OS. We are making intelligence native to the device."

The Snapdragon X2 Elite carries an 18-core Qualcomm Oryon processor alongside an Adreno graphics unit and a Hexagon neural processing unit. According to Qualcomm, that arrangement distributes work across separate components, allowing models to run on the machine itself while extending to the cloud when a task requires more capacity, scale or services than the device can supply on its own. Both companies said the design keeps selected work and sensitive material on the device, which they described as supporting privacy and data sovereignty.

Wassim Chourbaji, Senior Vice President and President for Qualcomm Europe, Middle East and Africa, described the shift in terms of how people will use the machines. "AI is rapidly emerging as the new interface for computing," he said. "As devices become increasingly capable of understanding user intent, we are entering an era of intelligent agents. In collaboration with Qualcomm Technologies, HUMAIN has created Horizon Ultra, a platform for this next generation of computing."

HUMAIN described the device as an extension of a business that already spans data centres, cloud and computing capacity, data and models, and applications, with the personal computer bringing that work closer to the people doing it. The company said the introduction of HUMAIN OS in 2027 will connect the device more closely to that wider platform.

For companies buying the machines, HUMAIN said local processing suits situations where response times, connectivity, privacy or data-handling requirements make running work on the device worthwhile, while keeping the ability to connect to enterprise and cloud systems. AlFalak will serve as the sales and delivery partner, handling enterprise purchasing and fulfilment.

Qualcomm described the launch as part of a wider change in personal computing, with AI moving from a feature inside software to part of the underlying architecture of the machine.