Saudi Aramco has closed its acquisition of a 49% stake in HUMAIN, Saudi Arabia's national artificial intelligence company, in a deal that pairs a cash contribution of approximately SAR 9.9 billion ($2.6 billion) during 2026 with the transfer of AI, computing and digital assets. The Public Investment Fund (PIF), the Kingdom's sovereign wealth fund, retains a 51% majority stake in HUMAIN, the two shareholders announced on Sunday, November 1.
Aramco is taking the stake through a wholly owned subsidiary, Saudi Aramco Development Company. The closing follows a non-binding term sheet signed by PIF and Aramco on October 28, 2025, which set out the key terms for combining their AI assets, capabilities and talent under HUMAIN. The companies have not disclosed an overall valuation for the transaction, and the cash figure covers only the 2026 cash contribution, not the value of the transferred assets.
What Aramco is buying
HUMAIN was launched by PIF in May 2025 and is building full-stack AI capabilities across four areas: next-generation data centres, high-performance computing infrastructure and cloud platforms, advanced AI models, and AI-powered industry solutions. Its flagship model is ALLaM, a large multimodal Arabic language model that the company describes as among the most powerful of its kind.
The company plans to deploy 3 gigawatts of AI data-centre capacity by 2030, with a longer-term ambition of 6 gigawatts by 2034, as it seeks to meet growing regional and global demand for AI compute. HUMAIN has said it aims to become one of the world's leading AI exporters, selling computing capacity and AI services beyond the Kingdom's borders.
A national AI champion, scaled up
The deal gives HUMAIN an industrial heavyweight as a shareholder alongside its sovereign-fund backer. Aramco is one of the world's largest companies by market capitalisation, and its president and chief executive, Amin H. Nasser, said the company had achieved $11.3 billion in Technology Realized Value since 2023, pointing to a track record in applying technology across its energy and chemicals operations.
Regulatory clearance for the transaction came earlier this year: the European Commission cleared Saudi Aramco Development Company and PIF to take joint control of HUMAIN under the EU Merger Regulation in July 2026. The closing now formalises an arrangement that had been in preparation for more than a year.
Why an oil giant wants an AI company
Aramco's move is part of a wider pattern of energy giants pushing deeper into artificial intelligence. Oil producers are both heavy users of AI, for exploration, refining and logistics, and increasingly investors in the infrastructure that powers it, as data centres become major consumers of energy.
For Saudi Arabia, the deal also fits the broader diversification drive: HUMAIN sits at the centre of the Kingdom's bid to build an AI industry that can stand alongside hydrocarbons. The transaction's structure, with PIF keeping control and Aramco contributing both cash and technology, keeps the national AI champion under state direction while bringing in the country's most capable industrial operator. What remains undisclosed is how much of the cash has already been paid, and the phased timetable for the capacity HUMAIN plans to bring online by 2030.
