Saudi Arabia’s $2 trillion gamble: Can Oil wealth fund tech revolution?

Andrea Zanon Confidente
3 min readMar 21, 2024
https://www.fxstreet.com/analysis/saudi-arabias-2-trillion-gamble-can-oil-wealth-fund-tech-revolution-202403212006

Can Saudi Arabia ditch oil for tech? Explore how the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund (PIF), a sovereign wealth fund, is fueling a bold economic transformation, from futuristic cities like NEOM to tech giant investments. Find out if this Vision 2030 gamble will secure their future.

It was just a few months ago that Saudi Sovereign Wealth Fund, PIF, had $676 billion in assets under management. As of the month of March, Saudi Arabia transferred a $164 billion stake in Aramco to PIF, propelling it to the second-biggest fund in the Middle East for an astonishing $925 billion. This is up from $595.6 billion in 2022 and is now resulting in PIF 16 percent ownership of Aramco.

As the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund (PIF) aims to reach the $2 trillion target in assets by 2030, it will have to compete with other regional sovereign wealth funds like the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (currently at $993 billion) and Kuwait Investment Authority ($923 billion) (SWF Data). With these three competitors, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) becomes a leading region in the world with three SWFs each approaching the $1 trillion mark in assets. These staggering sums speak volumes about these funds leveraging their oil and gas revenues to invest and transform their economies, preparing for a future beyond oil.

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