Saudi’s Humain invests $3 billion in Elon Musk’s xAI

Saudi Arabia’s state-backed artificial intelligence firm Humain said Wednesday it had invested $3 billion in US billionaire Elon Musk’s xAI.

The investment made Humain a “significant minority shareholder”, the company said in a statement.

It added that its xAI holdings would be “converted into SpaceX shares” after the rocket company announced it was taking over the AI start-up earlier this month as Musk pushes to unify his many business interests.

Humain, backed by Saudi Arabia’s nearly trillion-dollar sovereign wealth fund, launched last May as the world’s biggest oil exporter bets on AI to help diversify its economy.

Musk’s xAI had previously announced in November it was teaming up with Humain to build a 500-megawatt data centre in Saudi Arabia.

The Saudi firm also inked a new deal with Nvidia that month as US officials cleared the way for the sale of advanced microchips to the Gulf kingdom.

Stubbornly low oil prices and patchy demand have forced Riyadh to rethink the flamboyant mega-projects tied to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s Vision 2030 reform agenda.

On Friday, several sources told AFP the country was scaling back luxury resort plans on the Red Sea, which could deal a blow to hopes of transforming the coast into a top destination for tourists.

Neom, Saudi Arabia’s futuristic new city, is also reported to have hit major problems.

Meanwhile, xAI is facing growing public anxiety and regulatory scrutiny over the misuse of AI, including the spread of misinformation and sexualised imagery of children.

The recent rollout of an editing feature on Grok, developed by xAI and integrated into X, allowed users to alter online images of real people with simple text prompts such as “put her in a bikini” or “remove her clothes”.