Saudi Arabia AI Firm Humain Invests $3bn in Musk’s xAI
The investment also positions the Kingdom to benefit if Musk's other venture SpaceX proceeds with an IPO.
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The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has deepened its bet on artificial intelligence, with its state-owned AI company, Humain, investing $3 billion in Elon Musk’s xAI.
Humain announced on Wednesday that it contributed a large part of the $20 billion raised by xAI during its January funding round. This round concluded just before Musk merged the AI start-up with SpaceX in a deal valuing the combined company at $1.25 trillion. Based in Riyadh, the group described itself as a “significant minority shareholder” in xAI, and noted that its stake has now been converted into SpaceX shares.
The investment forms part of Saudi Arabia’s multibillion-dollar strategy to diversify its oil-dependent economy by building advanced digital infrastructure and developing domestic AI capabilities. Humain, backed by the Kingdom’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), was launched last year by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as the central vehicle for AI strategy and investment.
Humain first partnered with xAI in November, committing to develop more than 500 megawatts of new data center capacity in Saudi Arabia and to deploy xAI’s Grok chatbot in the country. The agreement signaled Riyadh’s intention to pair capital with infrastructure, combining compute power, local deployment, and strategic equity stakes.
“xAI’s trajectory, further strengthened by its acquisition by SpaceX, one of the largest technology mergers on record, represents the kind of high-impact platform we seek to support with significant capital,” said Tareq Amin, Humain’s chief executive.
The move also positions Humain to benefit from a potential SpaceX initial public offering, which could come as early as June. The IPO is expected to raise up to $50 billion, potentially making it the largest public listing in history and surpassing the $29 billion raised by Saudi Aramco in 2019.
Saudi Arabia is not alone. Oil-rich Gulf states have accelerated AI investments as they seek to transform their economies and attract high-growth technology companies. Sovereign wealth funds in the region have become a critical source of capital for Silicon Valley AI firms, which require vast sums to fund model development and the energy-intensive infrastructure that supports them.
xAI’s competitors, including OpenAI and Anthropic, have also secured major investments from Gulf backers. Smaller infrastructure-focused companies, such as chipmaker Groq, have also forged partnerships in the region.
