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OIL MONEY BUYS THE ROBOTS

By Zimbo · November 1, 2026

AI cartoon by Zimbo: Satirical cartoon: a Saudi Aramco oil pumpjack in the desert pumps small smiling robots into a bin labeled HUMAIN, beside a sign reading 49% stake, $2.6 billion.
Saudi Aramco takes 49% of HUMAIN for $2.6 billion — the oil giant is now in the AI business, and the pumpjack pumps robots.Zimbo for AI News Page

The story behind the cartoon

Saudi Aramco and Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund announced on November 1 that they have closed a transaction giving Aramco a 49% stake in HUMAIN, the state-backed artificial intelligence company launched by the PIF in May 2025, with the PIF retaining 51% ownership.

Aramco is contributing approximately 9.9 billion Saudi riyals ($2.6 billion) in cash during 2026, alongside AI, computing and digital assets, and both shareholders will contribute AI assets, capabilities and talent as HUMAIN scales toward its plan to deploy 3 gigawatts of AI data-center capacity by 2030.

HUMAIN is building a full-stack AI business spanning data centers, high-performance computing infrastructure, cloud platforms, advanced AI models and industry applications, including the ALLaM Arabic-language model, and the deal positions it to sell AI capacity at home and abroad with Aramco as a prospective in-house customer.

The pumpjack used to pump oil; now it pumps robots, and the only thing that changed is what comes out of the ground — the world's biggest oil company has decided the next gusher is artificial intelligence.

READ THE FULL REPORT — Reuters ↗

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