Aramco takes a 49% stake in Saudi AI company HUMAIN

The deal

Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) and energy and chemicals company Aramco announced in a joint statement on Nov. 1 that their HUMAIN transaction has closed. Aramco, through a wholly owned subsidiary, acquires a 49% stake in the AI company HUMAIN, while PIF keeps 51% as the majority owner. According to the statement, both shareholders are contributing AI assets, capabilities and talent.

According to the release, Aramco is acquiring its stake by transferring key AI assets to HUMAIN. It is also making about SAR 9.9 billion ($2.6 billion) in cash contributions to the company in 2026, in addition to AI, compute and digital assets. The cash goes to HUMAIN, not to PIF. The release does not say which Aramco assets are being transferred, what they are worth or how HUMAIN is valued.

What each side expects

Yazeed A. Al-Humied, PIF’s deputy governor and head of MENA investments, said bringing the two groups’ AI investments together under HUMAIN creates a powerful synergy. In his words, it will fuel talent growth, technological advancement and intellectual property creation. The release describes the deal as aligned with PIF’s 2026-2030 strategy.

Aramco President and CEO Amin H. Nasser said the company has achieved $11.3 billion in Technology Realized Value since 2023, with a significant portion coming from AI solutions. That is Aramco’s own metric, and the release does not explain how it is calculated. According to the statement, Aramco will use HUMAIN’s infrastructure to turn advanced AI capabilities into industrial applications. The partnership is expected to help Aramco monetize its existing AI and digital assets and complement its core energy business.

HUMAIN and the road here

Launched in May 2025, HUMAIN works in four areas: next-generation data centers, high-performance infrastructure and cloud platforms, advanced models including the multimodal Arabic large language model ALLAM, and AI solutions for industries. It plans to deploy 3 gigawatts of AI data center capacity by 2030. According to the release, the aim is to become one of the world’s leading exporters of AI.

PIF and Aramco signed a non-binding term sheet on Oct. 28, 2025. That announcement gave no stake size or price, and the deal was subject to definitive agreements and regulatory approvals. In the same announcement, PIF said it had recently transferred the Saudi Company for Artificial Intelligence (SCAI), which it wholly owned, to HUMAIN.