Saudi Arabia’s Humain took $3 billion stake in xAI

Saudi Arabia’s flagship artificial intelligence company Humain invested $3 billion in Elon Musk’s xAI shortly before it was acquired by his space exploration company, SpaceX, as the kingdom competes with its neighbors to become a regional AI powerhouse.

Humain, which is backed by the PIF, announced in November that it would build a 500-megawatt data center with xAI and that Saudi Arabia would roll out the company’s Grok generative AI chatbot.

The investment, which was part of a $20 billion funding round last month, will be converted into SpaceX shares, granting Humain about 0.24% stake in the combined $1.25 billion company, Bloomberg reports.

Formed just last year, Humain has been working to catch up to its Gulf peers as they aggressively pursue AI investments and infrastructure. Abu Dhabi firm MXG, which has put billions into xAI and competitors Anthropic and OpenAI, this week detailed its plans to deploy as much as $10 billion a year to secure a dominant position in the industry. 

Meanwhile, ChatGPT owner OpenAI is finalizing investors for a fundraising round that could net as much as $100 billion at an $830 billion valuation, The Information reports. CEO Sam Altman, a regular visitor to the UAE, was seen seated near Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed at the AI Impact Summit in New Delhi on Thursday.