Aramco HUMAIN stake: $2.6bn deal for 49% closes
Aramco HUMAIN stake deal closes: the oil giant pays SAR9.9bn ($2.6bn) and adds AI assets for 49% of PIF’s AI firm, which targets 3GW of capacity by 2030.
Layla Al Mansoori
◆3 November 2026
◆4 min read
The Aramco HUMAIN stake deal has closed, with the Saudi oil giant paying about SAR9.9bn ($2.6bn) in cash for 49% of the Public Investment Fund’s artificial intelligence company, both sides said on Sunday.
The stake is held through a wholly owned subsidiary, while PIF keeps the remaining 51%. The cash was contributed during 2026, and alongside it Aramco is folding its own AI, computing and digital assets into the company, according to the joint statement issued from Dhahran.
The closing formalises an agreement first announced in October 2025, when PIF and Aramco signed a non-binding term sheet on 28 October to combine their AI assets, capabilities and talent under HUMAIN, with the sovereign fund retaining majority ownership.
What the Aramco HUMAIN stake buys
HUMAIN was launched in May 2025 and is chaired by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. It is building what it describes as full-stack AI capabilities across four areas: next-generation data centres, high-performance computing and cloud platforms, advanced models including the Arabic large language model ALLaM, and AI solutions for business and government customers.
The company plans to deploy 3 gigawatts of AI data centre capacity by 2030 and says it aims to become one of the leading global exporters of AI capabilities. Aramco, for its part, expects to use HUMAIN’s infrastructure to roll out AI across its industrial operations, and said its affiliates would also benefit from the company’s services.
Aramco said it expects the partnership to create revenue growth opportunities with attractive margins, improve the monetisation of its existing AI and digital assets, and complement its core energy business. Neither party disclosed a valuation for HUMAIN, and Aramco has not itemised the assets it contributed.
Executives point to technology returns
Amin H. Nasser, Aramco’s president and chief executive, said the deal built on the company’s long record of innovation. “Since 2023, Aramco has achieved $11.3 billion in Technology Realized Value,” he said, adding that a significant share of that came from AI solutions.
Yazeed A. Al-Humied, deputy governor and head of MENA investments at PIF, said bringing the two shareholders’ AI portfolios together under HUMAIN would support talent growth, technological advancement and intellectual property creation. He said the transaction was aligned with PIF’s 2026–2030 strategy and that AI would act as an enabler across the fund’s six ecosystems.
Why it matters for Saudi AI data centres
The PIF HUMAIN deal gives the company a second deep-pocketed shareholder at a point when it is scaling up quickly. On 22 October HUMAIN expanded its agreement with Nvidia to as much as 84 megawatts of computing, or roughly 27,000 GPUs, across two phases. The first, a 14MW deployment of Blackwell HGX B300 systems, is due to begin in the fourth quarter of 2026, according to The National.
A day earlier, HUMAIN and DataVolt announced a preliminary framework agreement under which AI cloud company Nebius would take up to 50MW of capacity at their planned campus in Neom’s Oxagon, half of the initial 100MW under construction. That first phase is planned at 360MW and is expected to come online in stages from the fourth quarter of 2027.
For Saudi suppliers, HUMAIN is already a significant customer: new work orders under the MIS HUMAIN contract recently topped SAR3.4bn. Aramco itself continues to award large contracts across its core business, including the AED2.8bn NMDC Energy offshore award reported last month.
The Aramco HUMAIN stake also places the kingdom’s national oil company alongside PIF as co-owner of Saudi Arabia’s flagship AI venture, led by chief executive Tareq Amin, which has set itself a target of more than 6GW of capacity by 2034.
HUMAIN’s immediate tests are operational: bringing the first Nvidia systems online this quarter and advancing the Oxagon campus towards its 2027 start. Investors will also watch for any disclosure on how Aramco values the stake and the contributed assets in its financial reporting.
The full joint announcement is available on Aramco’s newsroom.
