Deals expected to be signed between Saudi and French entities at the Saudi–French Roundtable Investment Meeting in Paris exceed $10 billion, spanning advanced industries, transport and logistics services, artificial intelligence and digital infrastructure. The Crown Prince attended alongside French officials and business leaders.
ُhe four named sectors are advanced industries, logistics, AI and digital infrastructure، energy is not among them, which is what a diversification agenda looks like once it reaches the deal table.
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Foreign direct investment tops SR1.1 trillion
Saudi Arabia's foreign direct investment stock reached SR1,122.8 billion at the end of Q1 2026, up 12% year on year and representing about 32% of total foreign investment in the Kingdom, against total foreign investment of SR3,530.8 billion, up 18% year on year.
FDI growing 12% while total foreign investment grew 18% means portfolio and other investment are growing faster than direct investment, hot money is currently outpacing the patient kind.
Services Are The New Engine
PIF signed an MoU with ISquared Capital for up to $2bn, roughly $1bn each into digital infrastructureand district cooling, the unglamorous enablers behind real estate and datacenters
The takeaway: $1bn into digital infrastructure is a wager on compute demand; anyone in power, land, or connectivity near Riyadh should price a data-center boom into their plans.
PIF publishes its year
The Public Investment Fund's 2025 results show revenue up 9% to $120 billion and net profit more than doubling to $17 billion, with assets under management above $900 billion against $530 billion in 2021, annualised total shareholder return of 5.8% since 2017, 80% of assets held domestically and 55% in alternatives. PIF put its contribution at 11% of Saudi non-oil GDP in 2025 and $342 billion cumulatively from 2021 to 2025, with $199 billion deployed domestically over that period and international investments up 12% in 2025.
Revenue grew 9% and profit more than doubled, and the gap is portfolio companies beginning to pay out, not the fund's businesses running twice as well. The maturation of the new strategy is built on, showing up before the strategy did.
