Oil giant Aramco takes 49% stake in Saudi AI company

Saudi Aramco has announced its acquisition of a 49% stake in state-owned AI firm Humain, a move aimed at bolstering the tech company's capacity to meet escalating demand. The investment, spearheaded by the Saudi sovereign wealth fund Public Investment Fund (PIF), sees the remaining 51% of Humain remaining under public ownership. This strategic move comes after Aramco had been contemplating a minority stake in Humain for over a year.

The transaction, conducted via a wholly-owned subsidiary, is poised to expedite Humain's expansion and augment its AI capabilities on a global scale. PIF and Aramco will jointly provide AI assets, capabilities, and talent to facilitate this growth. The Aramco stake, through its subsidiary, is set to enable Humain's rapid scaling to address the burgeoning regional and global demand for AI computing power, with the company projecting to deploy 3GWs of AI data center capacity by 2030.

In addition to its AI advancements, Humain is also working on infrastructure and cloud platforms, and has developed an Arabic-language large language model (LLM). Aramco, one of the world's largest companies by market capitalization, is contributing approximately SAR9.9 billion (US$2.6 billion) to Humain this year. This investment, coupled with AI, compute, and digital assets, marks a significant step towards Humain's ambitious growth trajectory.

Aramco's President and CEO, Amin H Nasser, highlighted the transformative impact of AI on the oil giant, noting that it has generated US$11.3 billion in tech-related value since 2023.