Aramco Deepens Push Into AI and Advanced Technologies

Saudi Arabia’s energy giant Aramco is best known for its energy investments, but the company is also busy diversifying across industries. Right now, Aramco is building a presence in artificial intelligence development via its venture capital division, eyeing not just returns but possibly nurturing a local AI industry in Saudi Arabia.

Aramco Ventures has $7.5 billion in assets under management and is putting a lot of that into “deep technology startups” founded on “solid science and engineering”, according to the venture capital firm’s chief executive, who spoke to Forbes recently.

Indeed, Mahdi Aladel told Forbes’ Gaurav Sharma that AI represented the biggest share of investments made by the company. “The icing on the cake is to bring some of these startups and technologies back to Saudi Arabia to solve local problems and processes, whether in the wider Kingdom or within Aramco, ranging from how we run our upstream operations to information or operational cybersecurity solutions,” he said.

Earlier this year, Aramco said it expected AI and other advanced technology to have helped it achieve in 2025 a technology realized value of between $3 billion and $5 billion. The world’s biggest oil firm in both production and market capitalization had a total realized technology value of $6 billion in the period 2023-2024, the executive said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January.

Through increased use of AI and other advanced tech, Aramco realizes savings in drilling costs, well productivity, and maintenance costs, Nasser said at the time. “We want the energy industry to be more intelligent in capitalizing on AI,” he noted.

As part of these efforts to capitalize on AI and build a local industry, Aramco earlier this year inked a preliminary deal with Microsoft, centering on the Big Tech major’s Azure cloud platform, to be leveraged across Aramco’s operations.

At the heart of the deal was a push to strengthen digital sovereignty and data governance, the two said at the time. The companies will explore a roadmap for cloud deployment that incorporates sovereign controls and supports Saudi Arabia’s data residency requirements. This aligns with Riyadh’s broader push to localize critical digital infrastructure and ensure sensitive industrial data remains under national jurisdiction.

After artificial intelligence, Aramco Ventures’ biggest investment focus is on low-carbon technology, spanning “low carbon fuels, hydrogen, ammonia, carbon capture and energy storage,” per the company’s CEO.

Related: After Record $19.50 Premium, Saudi Arabia Eyes Sharp Cut to June Asia Prices

Saudi Arabia’s massive NEOM project is set to feature a green hydrogen facility with a capacity to produce 600 metric tons of green hydrogen daily. The installation was 80% completed as of mid-2025 and scheduled to start operating in 2027, but reports have suggested that finding buyers for the low-carbon hydrogen produced via electrolysis using electricity generated from wind and solar has been challenging.

In carbon capture, Aramco is investing in direct air capture in partnership with Siemens Energy, with the company stating that the project has positioned it “as a regional and global leader in carbon management solutions, directly supporting Saudi Vision 2030 and the Saudi Green Initiative. The company is also active in what it calls mobile carbon capture, bio energy carbon capture and storage.

Other areas of interest for Aramco ventures, according to its chief executive, include robotics, life sciences, and fintech. The focus of all investments is extracting as much value from them for the company as possible, Aladel told Forbes’ Sharma. Value goes beyond financial returns, the top executive explained.

“What really moves the needle is applications, and the tech advantages we bring to the table,” Aladel said. “This could be millions of dollars in savings (or gains) just from one solution that allows Aramco to execute a process faster, safer, better, cheaper and more sustainably – a plethora of metrics. That is where the understanding of a patient capital provision stems from.”

It is unclear how the current energy crisis in the Middle East would affect Aramco’s investment diversification plans, but higher oil prices are likely to have a positive effect on these plans.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

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