Aramco Acquires 49% HUMAIN Stake With $2.6B Cash, AI Assets

Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) and Aramco announced on November 1, 2026, the closing of a transaction in which Aramco, through a wholly owned subsidiary, acquired a 49% stake in artificial intelligence company HUMAIN, with PIF retaining 51% ownership.

Aramco acquired the stake by transferring key AI assets to HUMAIN and contributing approximately SAR 9.9 billion ($2.6 billion) in cash in 2026, according to the closing announcement published on Aramco’s newsroom. The transaction also involves AI, compute, and digital assets. PIF and Aramco are both contributing AI assets, capabilities, and talent to HUMAIN, and as the company’s shareholders the two organizations will oversee its expansion plans.

The companies said the transaction will further accelerate HUMAIN’s growth and advance its full range of AI capabilities globally. They said it will also enable HUMAIN’s plans to develop data center capacity by 2030 and deliver solutions that help the public and private sectors deploy AI at scale. The announcement framed the deal as building on Saudi Arabia’s efforts to enable the development and deployment of advanced data and AI technologies while attracting talent and investment.

Aramco’s Stated Rationale

Aramco said it expects to use HUMAIN’s AI infrastructure to translate advanced AI capabilities into industrial applications, further enhancing its global ecosystem and operations. The company said Aramco and its affiliates will benefit as a shareholder and strategic partner from HUMAIN’s advanced AI infrastructure and services. Aramco said the partnership is expected to enhance its monetization of existing AI and digital assets, support its broader strategy, and complement its core energy business, pointing to opportunities for revenue growth and attractive margins.

Aramco President & CEO Amin H. Nasser described the HUMAIN deal as very important to Aramco, building on what he called the company’s long track record of innovation and technology. Nasser said that since 2023, Aramco has achieved $11.3 billion in Technology Realized Value, with a significant portion coming from AI solutions. He said the partnership with PIF lays the foundation for localizing the AI industry and enabling faster, more integrated, and scalable deployment of AI systems.

PIF’s Statement and Strategy

Yazeed A. Al-Humied, Deputy Governor and Head of MENA Investments at PIF, said in PIF’s release of the announcement: “Bringing PIF and Aramco’s AI portfolio of investments together under HUMAIN creates a powerful synergy that fuels talent growth, technological advancement, and intellectual property creation.”

PIF said partnering with Aramco in HUMAIN aligns with its 2026–2030 strategy, which aims to deepen integration across economic ecosystems, expand opportunities with the private sector, and accelerate the growth of national companies into globally competitive leaders. The fund said its strategy for AI and the digital economy benefits from Saudi Arabia’s position as a globally competitive market through innovation and capacity building.

Path to the Transaction

PIF and Aramco first set out the framework for the deal on October 28, 2025, when they signed a non-binding term sheet outlining key terms for Aramco to acquire a significant minority stake in HUMAIN, with PIF retaining majority ownership, according to the October 2025 announcement on Aramco’s newsroom. The term sheet was subject to the signing of definitive agreements, applicable regulatory approvals, and other customary conditions.

The term-sheet announcement said the plan would combine the two organizations’ AI programs with joint work through HUMAIN, with the stated intention of enabling the rapid scaling of HUMAIN’s operations to capture value and accelerate its growth in the AI sector. It also disclosed that the Saudi Company for Artificial Intelligence (SCAI), wholly owned by PIF, had recently been transferred to HUMAIN.

HUMAIN’s Operations and Expansion Plans

HUMAIN launched in May 2025 and is building full-stack AI capabilities across four core areas: next-generation data centers; hyper-performance infrastructure and cloud platforms; advanced AI models; and transformative AI solutions. Its model lineup includes ALLaM, which the companies describe as one of the world’s most powerful multimodal Arabic large language models.

The companies said HUMAIN plans the deployment of 3 gigawatts of AI data center capacity by 2030 and is rapidly scaling to meet growing regional and global demand for AI compute. They said HUMAIN aims to build a globally competitive, integrated AI ecosystem spanning the full stack, from data centers and high-performance compute to advanced models, applications, and industry solutions, with the goal of becoming one of the leading exporters of AI globally.