Aramco buys 49% of HUMAIN for SAR 9.9 billion

The Public Investment Fund and Aramco announced the completion of a deal under which a wholly owned Aramco unit acquires 49% of HUMAIN, with the fund retaining 51%, in a step aimed at accelerating the company's growth and expanding its artificial intelligence capabilities globally.

The statement said Aramco obtains the stake through the transfer of key AI assets and a contribution of about SAR 9.9 billion, equivalent to $2.6 billion, in cash during 2026, while both parties contribute assets, capabilities and talent in artificial intelligence.

HUMAIN seeks to build an integrated ecosystem covering data centers, high-performance computing, advanced models, applications and sector solutions, with plans to deploy 3 gigawatts of AI data center capacity by 2030 to meet growing regional and global demand for computing power.

The statement said the deal supports PIF's 2026-2030 strategy, which aims to deepen integration between economic ecosystems, expand opportunities with the private sector and accelerate the growth of national companies into competitors able to compete globally, and also strengthens Saudi efforts to develop data and AI technologies and attract talent and investment.

What do these terms mean?

Public Investment Fund: Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, which invests in local and global projects to support economic diversification.

Gigawatt: A unit of electrical power; one gigawatt equals 1,000 megawatts and is used to measure data center capacity.

High-performance computing: Ultra-fast computer systems that process huge amounts of data and are used to train AI models.

AI data centers: Facilities containing servers and specialized processing units to run AI models and store data.