Aramco Ventures opens Paris office for European investments

Aramco Ventures, a VC arm of Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company, is opening an office in Paris to oversee hundreds of millions of dollars worth of investments in artificial intelligence planned across Europe.

While heavy red-tape has hindered Europe’s ability to compete on the scale of the U.S. and China, it has produced some successful AI startups, including Paris-based Mistral, a maker of large language models, which counts Sanabil, the tech arm of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, among its investors.

Ahmad O. Al-Khowaiter, Aramco’s Executive Vice President of Technology and Innovation, highlighted Aramco’s growing collaborations with French companies and plans for deeper investment in next-generation technologies across Europe at the Adopt AI International Summit in Paris this week.

On Sunday, French quantum computing start-up Pasqal installed its most powerful system at Aramco’s datacenter in Dhahran.

Another part of Aramco’s VC arm, Wa’ed Ventures, was an early backer in Pasqal’s 2023 funding round and has been working with the company to adapt its technology to the kingdom’s industrial needs.

“This will expand quantum computing expertise in the region, and accelerate quantum applications in the energy, materials, and industrial sectors,” Al-Khowaiter said. “We are committed to our partnerships here, and also to the infectious spirit of innovation that surrounds the French tech industry.”