Oil giant Aramco takes 49 per cent stake in Saudi AI company

Riyadh: Oil major Saudi Aramco said it was taking a 49 percent stake in state-backed AI company Humain on Sunday, injecting cash and assets as the tech firm tries to scale up to meet rising demand.

The Public Investment Fund, the Saudi sovereign wealth fund driving economic diversification efforts, will retain the other 51 percent, they said in a joint statement.

Aramco, cornerstone of the oil-reliant Saudi economy, has been planning a significant minority stake for at least a year in Humain, which launched in May 2025.

"The transaction will further accelerate Humain's growth and advance its full range of AI capabilities globally, with PIF and Aramco contributing AI assets, capabilities, and talent," the statement said.

The Aramco stake, via a wholly owned subsidiary, "supports Humain's rapid scaling to meet growing regional and global demand for AI compute", the statement added. 

Humain is planning to deploy three gigawatts of AI data centre capacity by 2030. It is also working on infrastructure and cloud platforms, and has developed an Arabic-language LLM, the statement said.

Aramco, one of the world's biggest companies by market capitalisation, will inject about 9.9 billion Saudi riyals ($2.6 billion) into Humain this year along with AI, compute and digital assets.

Amin H. Nasser, Aramco's president and CEO, said AI had helped the oil giant reach $11.3 billion in tech-related value since 2023.