European Commission clears Aramco, PIF's joint acquisition of HUMAIN

Logo of HUMAIN 

The European Commission (EC) approved, under the EU Merger Regulation, the joint acquisition of HUMAIN by Saudi Aramco and the Public Investment Fund (PIF).

According to an EC statement, the transaction primarily concerns the development and management of AI technologies and infrastructure, and was reviewed under the simplified merger review procedure.

The notified transaction raises no competition concerns due to its limited impact on the European Economic Area (EEA) and the parties' limited combined market share following the proposed deal, the EC highlighted.

HUMAIN was launched in May 2025 to build a comprehensive AI ecosystem across four core areas: next-generation data centers, high-performance infrastructure and cloud computing, advanced AI models—including one of the world's most powerful multimodal large language models (LLMs) for Arabic—and innovative AI solutions.

According to Argaam data, PIF and Saudi Aramco signed a non-binding term sheet in October 2025 outlining the principal terms for Aramco's acquisition of a significant minority stake in HUMAIN, which is wholly owned by PIF.