PIF's consortium set to win EU approval for the $55bn EA take-private — history's largest LBO — merger clearance due 22 July, subsidy review closes 30 July.
The takeaway: $55bn for a games company is the clearest statement yet that entertainment is not a side bet, gaming is a Saudi strategic asset class.
Explore more signals
SR 3.6bn, 2,505 apartments, one fund
Alramz Real Estate established a Shariah-compliant fund of more than SR3.6bn, managed by SNB Capital, with Alramz holding 100% of the units. The vehicle covers a 90,000+ sqm site in Al Raed district, Riyadh. 2,505 residential apartments plus commercial space, on a development contract worth roughly SR1.2bn, with 10% development fees and 2.5% marketing fees over an approximately five-year term.
2,505 units delivered into a market where new residential mortgage lending has roughly halved year on year. The build is a five-year bet that the financing side normalises well before handover, and that is the assumption to interrogate, not the design.
Six months to fund $5 billion
DataVolt expects to close financing on its Saudi AI data centre pipeline — $5 billion total — within six months, with a 1.5GW facility at Neom whose first phase is due operational in 2028. Its Uzbekistan site TAS-1 is raising up to $150 million against a $250 million project cost, including $78 million from the EBRD on a 12-year non-recourse term; the first 6MW phase has under 10% of capacity left. Parent Vision Invest manages more than $95 billion of infrastructure assets.
The Uzbekistan deal is the tell. A 12-year non-recourse structure with a development bank anchoring it is the template they'll try to replicate at Neom and 1.5GW is roughly twenty times the scale, which is where the template gets tested.
Cards flat, phones compounding
Mobile payments in Saudi Arabia ran at SAR 13,100 a second in July, up from SAR 4,200 a second in July 2021 — a 210% rise across five years, and around SAR 34 billion for the month. Card sales came in at SAR 25.7 billion in the same month, up 0.3% year on year, while e-commerce set a record at SAR 37.6 billion, up 26%.
When pitching to Saudi merchants, payment infrastructure vendors should highlight the 26% e-commerce figure instead of focusing on the 0.3% card statistic. This growth is happening in an area where their buyers are not fully meeting demand.
