The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, announced the world’s largest ever corporate acquisition with SpaceX taking over xAI on 2 February.

Saudi Arabia’s Kingdom Holding Company and its chairman Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Al-Saud have both gained from the deal, which values SpaceX at $1tn and xAI at $250bn following the acquisition.

In an official post on X dated 5 February, Kingdom Holding said: The combined valuation of Prince Alwaleed and Kingdom Holding’s investments across X, xAI, SpaceX and Starlink is now $9.2bn.  

In December last year, Kingdom Holding said that Prince Alwaleed and Kingdom Holding invested $130m in X (then known as Twitter) in 2011. In 2024, the investment, which expanded to include xAI, brought the combined value of the investment to $7.5bn. In March 2025, xAI acquired X and the merged entity was valued at $113bn at the time.

In his statement on 2 February this year, Musk explained the objectives of SpaceX’s acquisition of xAI. “SpaceX has acquired xAI to form the most ambitious, vertically-integrated innovation engine on (and off) Earth, with AI, rockets, space-based internet, direct-to-mobile device communications and the world’s foremost real-time information and free speech platform,” he said.

Commenting on X, Prince Alwaleed thanked Musk and commented on a new chapter in space.

Thank you my friend @elonmusk!@X→ @xai→ @SpaceX & @Starlink.
An exciting new chapter, to the stars🚀. https://t.co/UHVm8ZC6QM

A key part of Musk’s ambitious plans is developing data centres in space. “Current advances in AI are dependent on large terrestrial data centres, which require immense amounts of power and cooling. Global electricity demand for AI simply cannot be met with terrestrial solutions, even in the near term, without imposing hardship on communities and the environment,” said Musk.

“The only logical solution therefore is to transport these resource-intensive efforts to a location with vast power and space. I mean, space is called “space” for a reason,” he added.

Kingdom Holding is also a major investor in Saudi Arabia. According to its annual report for 2024, over 40% of its investment are in Saudi Arabia. These investments include Jeddah Economic City, which includes the world's tallest tower as its centrepiece. Construction work for the tower, which will be over 1,000 metres tall when completed, officially restarted in Janaury 2025. The local Saudi Binladin Group is the contractor.