On February 18, 2026, Saudi Arabia’s national AI champion, HUMAIN, officially announced a $3 billion strategic investment in Elon Musk’s xAI. This capital injection was part of xAI’s Series E funding round and marks one of the largest sovereign investments in a private AI firm to date.
The timing of the deal is particularly significant, as it was finalized just before xAI was formally acquired and merged into SpaceX in early February 2026.
Key Terms of the Deal
The investment transforms Saudi Arabia from a regional partner into a global stakeholder in Musk’s unified AI and space empire.
- Equity Conversion: As a result of the $3 billion investment, HUMAIN became a “significant minority shareholder” in xAI. Following the merger, these holdings were converted into SpaceX equity, giving the Saudi firm exposure to the combined entity.
- Series E Context: The $3 billion was part of a broader, upsized Series E round (totaling approximately $20 billion) that xAI raised to fund its massive “Colossus” supercomputer clusters.
- PIF Backing: HUMAIN is fully backed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), which oversees nearly $1 trillion in assets and is tasked with diversifying the Kingdom’s economy under Vision 2030.
Infrastructure: 500 MW “Grok” Data Centers
The investment is the financial anchor for a massive physical infrastructure project announced in November 2025.
| Project Component | Detail |
| Compute Capacity | Joint development of over 500 Megawatts (MW) of AI data center capacity in Saudi Arabia. |
| Grok Deployment | Localized deployment of xAI’s Grok models across the Kingdom. |
| AI Agents | Integration of Grok with HUMAIN ONE, a software system designed to run autonomous AI agents for government and enterprise use. |
| Hardware | Expected use of the 18,000 NVIDIA chips previously secured by HUMAIN in mid-2025. |
Strategic Significance: The “Sovereign AI” Race
The deal solidifies Saudi Arabia’s position in the high-stakes race with the UAE to become the Middle East’s primary AI hub.
- Sovereign Compute: By securing 500 MW of dedicated xAI infrastructure, Saudi Arabia ensures it has the “sovereign compute” necessary to train Arabic-native models without relying on Western cloud providers.
- Space-Based AI: Following the SpaceX merger, Elon Musk has teased “solar-powered, space-based AI” using Starlink’s satellite architecture. HUMAIN’s equity conversion into SpaceX effectively makes Saudi Arabia a partner in this futuristic “orbital intelligence” roadmap.
- U.S. Regulatory Clearance: The deal was made possible after U.S. officials cleared the export of advanced AI semiconductors to the Gulf, provided the Kingdom avoids using equipment from restricted Chinese vendors like Huawei.
“This investment reflects HUMAIN’s conviction in transformational AI… xAI’s trajectory, further strengthened by its acquisition by SpaceX, represents the kind of high-impact platform we seek to support with significant capital.” — Tareq Amin, CEO, HUMAIN.
