The Trillion-Dollar Fund That Went to War

RIYADH — Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, a $941 billion sovereign wealth machine built to wean the Kingdom off oil, is being reshaped by a war nobody in its Riyadh headquarters planned for. Since Iranian missiles began striking Gulf targets on 28 February 2026, PIF has entered an undeclared wartime footing — freezing giga-project spending, accelerating defense industrial investments through its subsidiary SAMI, and quietly redirecting agricultural acquisitions to secure food supplies for 35 million people whose shipping lanes are under fire. The result is the largest involuntary portfolio rebalancing in sovereign wealth fund history.

What makes PIF’s wartime pivot extraordinary is not the scale of disruption but the emerging evidence that conflict may be doing what a decade of peacetime ambition could not. The fund recorded an $8 billion write-down on its giga-projects in 2024, months before the first missile flew. Construction on The Line at NEOM was suspended in September 2025. PIF had already approved cuts of up to 60 percent across more than 100 of its portfolio companies at a December 2024 board review, according to AGBI reporting. The war did not break PIF’s strategy — it accelerated a correction that was already underway, and may ultimately leave the fund leaner, more focused, and better positioned for a post-conflict Middle East.

What Is Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund?

The Public Investment Fund is Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund and the primary vehicle through which Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has sought to transform the Kingdom’s economy under Vision 2030. Established in 1971 to finance development projects, PIF was restructured in 2015 into a globally active investment fund with a mandate to diversify Saudi Arabia’s revenue away from hydrocarbon dependency. It is chaired by MBS himself, with Yasir Al-Rumayyan serving as governor since 2015.

PIF’s assets under management reached $941 billion by early 2026, according to the Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute, making it the fifth-largest sovereign wealth fund on the planet. The fund sits behind Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global ($1.8 trillion), China Investment Corporation ($1.3 trillion), Abu Dhabi Investment Authority ($1.1 trillion), and Kuwait Investment Authority ($969 billion). PIF’s stated ambition is to reach $2.67 trillion in assets by 2030, a target Al-Rumayyan reiterated at the Future Investment Initiative conference in late 2025.

No other sovereign wealth fund has attempted what PIF is doing: simultaneously building an entire country’s non-oil economy from scratch while managing a globally diversified portfolio. The fund operates more than 220 portfolio companies across 13 strategic sectors, has created over 1.1 million direct and indirect jobs, and deploys capital at a pace that dwarfs its Gulf peers. In 2024 alone, PIF deployed $56.8 billion in capital across priority sectors, bringing cumulative investment since 2021 to more than $171 billion, according to PIF’s annual report.

How Did PIF Grow From $150 Billion to Nearly $1 Trillion?

PIF’s growth trajectory from a sleepy government holding company to one of the world’s most aggressive sovereign investors is a story of three phases. The first phase, from 2015 to 2018, saw MBS restructure the fund, appoint Al-Rumayyan, and secure the transformative injection of Aramco shares — giving PIF a 4 percent stake in the world’s most valuable oil company. That single transfer added hundreds of billions in assets overnight and established PIF as a top-ten global sovereign fund without deploying a single dollar in fresh capital.

The second phase, from 2019 to 2023, was the international expansion era. PIF acquired stakes in Uber, Lucid Motors, Nintendo, SoftBank’s Vision Fund, and the English football club Newcastle United. It launched Riyadh Air, a new national carrier designed to make the Saudi capital a global aviation hub. It committed $3.5 billion to a Foxconn partnership for electric vehicle manufacturing. It backed Cruise Saudi to bring autonomous vehicles to NEOM. The pace was relentless — PIF ranked second globally for sovereign investor deal activity in February 2026, completing $3 billion in transactions in a single month, according to Arab News.

The third phase, from 2024 onward, has been defined by domestic retrenchment and now war. PIF’s assets under management grew 19 percent in 2024 to $913 billion, according to The National newspaper citing PIF’s annual report. That growth came despite an $8 billion write-down on giga-projects and a 12.4 percent decline in the value of its mega-development portfolio. The fund’s international investments fell to 17 percent of the portfolio, down from 20 percent the year prior, as PIF directed more capital domestically — a trend the war has only intensified.

Much of PIF’s asset growth has been driven by government transfers rather than investment returns. Saudi Arabia transferred its Aramco stake, valued at roughly $1.7 trillion at peak, to PIF. Additional transfers of government-owned real estate, industrial assets, and agricultural holdings have steadily inflated the balance sheet. Strip out government transfers and the returns picture becomes less impressive — a point that independent analysts at the Arab Gulf States Institute and Global SWF have noted repeatedly. The fund’s actual investment returns have been dragged down by underperforming positions in Lucid Motors, SoftBank’s Vision Fund (which lost $14 billion in its first year), and multiple giga-projects that consumed capital without generating revenue.

Where Does PIF Put Its Money?

PIF’s portfolio spans thirteen strategic sectors, but the allocation tells a revealing story about Saudi priorities. Roughly 80 percent of the fund’s assets are invested domestically, with the remaining 20 percent spread across international markets. Alternative investments — private equity, real estate, infrastructure — account for 55 percent of the portfolio, a far higher proportion than the Norwegian fund’s predominantly public-equity strategy.

The largest domestic holdings cluster around five pillars: energy (through the Aramco stake), real estate and development (through the giga-projects), defense (through SAMI), technology (through SCAI, the Saudi Company for Artificial Intelligence), and agriculture (through SALIC). The giga-projects — NEOM, The Red Sea, Qiddiya, Diriyah, ROSHN, and King Salman Park — constituted 6 percent of PIF’s assets at year-end 2024, down from 8 percent the year prior, reflecting both the write-down and a deliberate shift in emphasis.

What Does the Iran War Mean for PIF’s Strategy?

The Iranian missile and drone campaign that began on 28 February 2026 has forced the most significant reallocation of PIF capital since MBS took control of the fund. Three immediate consequences are visible. First, defense and security spending has surged, with Saudi Arabia’s military budget already running at $78 billion annually — 21 percent of government spending and 7.3 percent of GDP, according to Trading Economics data — and wartime supplemental appropriations pushing that figure higher. Second, giga-project construction has effectively frozen. Third, PIF’s food and agricultural subsidiary SALIC has moved from a long-term strategic investment to an urgent operational necessity.

The shift is structural, not tactical. PIF was already recalibrating before the war. Al-Rumayyan announced in late 2025 that the fund would unveil a new 2026-2030 strategy organized around six ecosystems — travel and entertainment, urban development, advanced manufacturing, industry and logistics, clean energy, and NEOM. The Year of Artificial Intelligence designation for 2026 signaled that technology would receive elevated priority. The war has not overturned this framework, but it has violently re-weighted the priorities within it.

Defense and food security have jumped from supporting roles to existential imperatives. The entertainment, tourism, and sports investments that consumed PIF attention from 2019 to 2024 now look like peacetime luxuries. The $38 billion gaming push, the Formula 1 ambitions, the esports championships — none of these generate the military vehicles, missile interceptors, or grain shipments that Saudi Arabia needs in March 2026.

The question facing Al-Rumayyan’s team is whether PIF can maintain its transformation mandate while simultaneously bankrolling a war economy — or whether the fund will be forced to choose between the future Saudi Arabia MBS envisioned and the one Iranian missiles are creating. The answer may depend on how long the conflict lasts. A two-week war allows PIF to resume peacetime operations with minimal disruption. A two-month war forces fundamental restructuring. A two-year war transforms PIF into something closer to a wartime mobilization agency than a sovereign wealth fund.

SAMI and the Defense Industrial Windfall

Saudi Arabian Military Industries, a wholly owned PIF subsidiary established in 2017, has emerged as the unexpected beneficiary of the Iran conflict. SAMI operates across five divisions — aerospace, land systems, sea, defense systems, and advanced electronics — and its mandate to localize 50 percent of Saudi military spending by 2030 has gained urgency that no peacetime policy document could provide.

The numbers are striking. Saudi Arabia spent $78 billion on defense in 2025, according to government budget data. The General Authority for Military Industries has driven defense localization from 4 percent in 2018 to 19.35 percent in 2024. At the current trajectory, meeting the 50 percent target would channel approximately $39 billion annually through domestic manufacturers — a figure that would make SAMI’s ecosystem one of the largest defense industrial bases in the Middle East.

At the World Defense Show in Riyadh in February 2026, weeks before the war began, SAMI showcased more than 60 national defense products. The HEET program unveiled a new generation of fully Saudi-designed wheeled armored vehicles, developed with indigenous intellectual property and manufactured entirely within the Kingdom. SAMI signed a deal with Turkey’s ULAQ Global to localize unmanned surface vessel production on Saudi soil. The SAMI Land Industrial Complex, when fully operational, will produce up to 1,500 military vehicles annually and create more than 1,000 Saudi jobs.

The WDS itself closed with 60 military and defense contracts worth 33 billion Saudi riyals, approximately $8.8 billion, according to the Saudi Press Agency. The war has transformed these contracts from aspirational industrial policy into wartime procurement imperatives. Saudi military strength now depends not just on what the Kingdom can buy from Washington but on what it can build at home — and PIF’s defense portfolio is positioned at the center of that transition.

The localization push extends beyond SAMI. PIF recently facilitated a $5 billion deal to build Chinese combat drones in Jeddah, a transaction that would have been geopolitically unthinkable before the war exposed the limitations of relying exclusively on American defense suppliers. Ukraine’s offer to send drone defense teams to Saudi Arabia, accepted by Riyadh in early March, adds another supplier to a defense ecosystem that PIF must finance. Each new defense partnership creates procurement pipelines that flow through PIF’s capital allocation process, steadily increasing the fund’s defense exposure from a pre-war 5 percent toward what analysts at CSIS estimate could reach 10 to 12 percent of total assets by 2028.

Can PIF’s Giga-Projects Survive a Prolonged War?

The giga-projects were supposed to be PIF’s legacy — the physical embodiment of Vision 2030’s promise to build a post-oil Saudi Arabia. NEOM alone carried a $500 billion price tag. The Red Sea tourism development, Qiddiya entertainment city, and Diriyah heritage quarter collectively added hundreds of billions more. Together, they represented the most ambitious construction program any sovereign wealth fund has ever attempted.

The war has exposed what the $8 billion write-down already hinted at: many of these projects were overextended. Construction on The Line, NEOM’s signature linear city, was suspended in September 2025, three months before the first Iranian missile struck. Only 2.4 kilometers of foundation work had been completed. The population target for 2030 was slashed from 1.5 million to fewer than 300,000. The Asian Winter Games at Trojena were postponed indefinitely in January 2026. An internal audit leaked to the Wall Street Journal revealed projected costs of $8.8 trillion and a completion timeline stretching to 2080, according to CNBC reporting.

The war’s impact compounds these pre-existing problems. NEOM’s Red Sea location places it within range of Houthi-controlled territory in Yemen. PIF capital that might have flowed toward construction is being diverted to defense procurement. Foreign construction firms and their workers — many of whom came from South Asia — face the same evacuation pressures affecting the broader Gulf expatriate community. Insurance costs for construction in a war zone have become effectively prohibitive.

The exceptions are instructive. The green hydrogen plant at NEOM’s Oxagon is 80 percent complete and continues toward commissioning. A $5 billion data center partnership with DataVolt positions NEOM as AI infrastructure rather than residential utopia. These surviving projects share a common feature: they are industrial, revenue-generating, and strategically valuable in wartime. The decorative giga-projects are frozen. The functional ones proceed.

The $8 Billion Write-Down That Predicted the Crisis

In August 2025, PIF disclosed an $8 billion write-down on its giga-project portfolio, a figure first reported by Bloomberg and subsequently confirmed by CNBC and Semafor. The write-down reduced giga-project investments by 12.4 percent to 211 billion Saudi riyals ($56.2 billion). The fund’s total assets still grew 19 percent to $913 billion, burying the bad news beneath the headline number. But the write-down signaled something important: PIF’s leadership had already concluded that its most ambitious projects were overvalued.

The causes were mundane rather than dramatic. Budget overruns at NEOM, where contractors repeatedly encountered geological challenges in the Tabuk desert. Operational complications at The Red Sea development, where environmental restrictions limited construction timelines. Lower crude oil prices in 2024, which reduced Aramco dividend income and tightened PIF’s capital pipeline. The fund had approved cuts of up to 60 percent across more than 100 portfolio companies at a December 2024 board review, according to AGBI.

In retrospect, the write-down was not a failure but a necessary repricing that positioned PIF to absorb the shock of war. A fund carrying $8 billion in phantom giga-project value into a missile conflict would have faced a credibility crisis. By taking the hit in 2025, PIF entered the war with a cleaner balance sheet and lower expectations — precisely the conditions that enable wartime flexibility.

The write-down also served a secondary function: it reduced PIF’s exposure to the construction sector, which has been among the hardest hit by the conflict. With construction workers evacuating, material supply chains disrupted, and insurance costs for Gulf building sites surging, the companies that PIF wrote down in 2024 would have faced even steeper losses in 2026. The early correction, painful as it was at the time, saved PIF from a cascading write-down during wartime that could have damaged investor confidence in MBS’s entire economic project.

From SALIC to Olam Agri and the Food Security Shield

Saudi Arabia imports approximately 80 percent of its food. The Strait of Hormuz closure and ongoing attacks on Gulf shipping infrastructure have turned this dependency from a policy concern into an immediate threat. PIF’s agricultural subsidiary, the Saudi Agricultural and Livestock Investment Company, may prove to be the fund’s most strategically valuable wartime asset.

SALIC operates on a premise that seemed forward-thinking when launched and now looks prescient: acquiring controlling stakes in global agricultural supply chains to guarantee Saudi food access during disruptions. The most significant deal closed in early 2026, when SALIC finalized a $1.78 billion acquisition to raise its stake in Singapore-based Olam Agri Holdings from 35.43 percent to 80.01 percent. Olam Agri operates across 30 countries and controls grain, edible oils, rice, and cotton supply chains that feed billions of people.

SALIC’s strategy was refined after the COVID-19 pandemic exposed Saudi supply chain vulnerabilities, according to PIF communications. The fund invested in key commodity markets including Brazil, India, and Australia, securing access to livestock, grain, and agricultural commodities through direct ownership rather than market purchases. A partnership with Syngenta, the global agri-tech leader, aims to deploy advanced farming technology within the Kingdom, while vertical farming ventures like Green Dunes use 95 percent less water than traditional agriculture.

The Gulf fertilizer crisis has added a new dimension. With Hormuz effectively closed and Red Sea shipping under pressure from potential Houthi threats, Saudi food imports must transit longer and more expensive routes. SALIC’s global network provides alternative sourcing that countries without sovereign agricultural arms cannot access. The fund designed for food security in a hypothetical emergency is now operating in a real one.

The contrast with Saudi Arabia’s Gulf neighbors is instructive. The UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar all import comparable proportions of their food supply but lack anything resembling SALIC’s global agricultural network. When shipping lanes closed, these states turned to emergency stockpiles and diplomatic requests. Saudi Arabia, through PIF and SALIC, had direct ownership of the supply chains themselves — a structural advantage that justifies years of investment in what many analysts dismissed as a vanity agricultural portfolio.

Is PIF’s International Empire a Liability or a Lifeline?

PIF’s international portfolio reads like a shopping list assembled by a billionaire with eclectic tastes. Newcastle United Football Club, acquired in 2021 for approximately $410 million. A 50-percent-plus stake in Lucid Motors, the electric vehicle manufacturer, into which PIF has invested more than $9 billion since 2018. A 15 percent stake in Heathrow Airport, part of a $4.12 billion combined deal with French investment firm Ardian completed in December 2024. A $45 billion commitment to SoftBank’s Vision Fund. Stakes in Uber, Electronic Arts, Live Nation, and dozens more.

The war complicates every one of these investments differently. Newcastle United, which won the Carabao Cup in 2025, faces no direct operational disruption — English football does not stop for Gulf wars. But the political optics of a Saudi state fund owning a Premier League club during a regional conflict that has killed civilians in Al-Kharj create public relations pressure that PIF’s London team must manage. The UK government’s renewed defense partnership with Saudi Arabia, reported by multiple outlets after the Iran strikes, adds a transactional dimension: PIF’s investment in British assets creates goodwill that Riyadh can leverage for defense cooperation.

Lucid Motors presents a different challenge. The electric vehicle maker has struggled commercially, with its interim CEO acknowledging that 2026 production volumes “will not be meaningful.” PIF holds a majority stake worth far less than its cumulative $9 billion investment. In peacetime, this was a long-term bet on Saudi industrial diversification — Lucid plans to open a manufacturing facility in the Kingdom. In wartime, an unprofitable EV company in Arizona is a drag on a balance sheet that needs liquidity for defense spending.

The Heathrow stake, by contrast, looks increasingly shrewd. Airport infrastructure generates stable, inflation-linked returns regardless of Gulf geopolitics. The investment provides PIF with sterling-denominated income at a time when the dollar peg faces pressure and geographic diversification away from the Middle East has tangible risk-reduction value.

The overall picture is that PIF’s international portfolio provides something that domestic giga-projects cannot: income and asset value that is uncorrelated with the war. A missile can strike an Aramco refinery. It cannot strike a Newcastle football stadium or a Heathrow terminal. In a conflict that has made every Gulf-based asset riskier, PIF’s international diversification looks less like vanity spending and more like insurance.

The Wartime Wealth Paradox

The conventional narrative holds that the Iran war is devastating for Saudi Arabia’s economic transformation. Vision 2030 is under fire, the war is eating the future, and PIF’s giga-projects are collateral damage. The evidence for this case is substantial and well-documented. But it is incomplete.

The contrarian case begins with oil. Brent crude has traded above $110 per barrel since the Hormuz closure, and briefly touched $119.50. Saudi Arabia produces approximately 9 million barrels per day. Even with Hormuz disruptions forcing exports through the East-West Pipeline to Yanbu at reduced volumes, the price premium is generating windfall revenue. Aramco’s fourth-quarter 2025 earnings fell 20 percent to $17.8 billion on lower pre-war crude prices — but the board still increased the base quarterly dividend by 3.5 percent, to $21.89 billion. War-era crude prices, if sustained, would push Aramco’s 2026 earnings dramatically higher, feeding PIF’s capital pipeline.

The paradox sharpens further. PIF’s giga-project portfolio was the fund’s weakest asset class — overbudget, behind schedule, and carrying $8 billion in acknowledged write-downs. The war provides political cover to pause these projects without admitting failure. No Saudi official needs to tell MBS that The Line does not work. They can say it was paused for the war effort. When the conflict ends, PIF can restart selectively, funding the projects that have a viable path and quietly shelving those that do not. The war grants the reset that peacetime politics would never have permitted.

The defense industrial base, meanwhile, is receiving the kind of urgent investment that normally requires a generation of policy advocacy. SAMI’s contracts, GAMI’s localization targets, and the $8.8 billion in deals signed at the World Defense Show are not war casualties — they are war dividends. Saudi Arabia has spent decades importing 96 percent of its military equipment. The Iran war may be the catalyst that finally builds a domestic defense industry, and PIF — through SAMI — owns the platform.

The war did not break PIF’s strategy. It accelerated a correction that was already underway, pruning weak investments while supercharging the defense and food security arms that Saudi Arabia always needed but never prioritized with sufficient urgency.
Editorial analysis, March 2026

The Sovereign War-Readiness Index

Not all sovereign wealth funds are equally prepared to support a nation at war. A framework for evaluating war-readiness across five dimensions reveals where PIF stands relative to its peers — and where its gaps remain most dangerous.

PIF scores highest on defense industrial capacity — SAMI gives it a direct pathway to convert wealth into warfighting capability that no other major sovereign fund possesses. Its energy security position is strong, with the Aramco stake providing both income and strategic relevance. Food security through SALIC is better than Gulf peers but still dependent on shipping routes. The fund’s primary weakness is portfolio liquidity: with 55 percent in alternative investments and 80 percent domestic, PIF cannot quickly sell assets to raise cash in the way Norway’s index-tracking fund can.

The index suggests that PIF is better positioned for a prolonged war than its raw liquidity numbers imply, because its war-relevant assets — defense production, energy, food supply chains — are precisely the illiquid domestic holdings that conventional financial analysis would flag as weaknesses. In peacetime, an investment in a Saudi armored vehicle factory looks like poor return-on-capital. In wartime, it looks like national survival.

Norway’s GPFG, by contrast, scores highest on liquidity and reserve depth but has virtually no capacity to support Norwegian defense production — its mandate explicitly prohibits investments in weapons manufacturers. Abu Dhabi’s ADIA maintains strong financial reserves but lacks PIF’s integrated defense subsidiary, relying instead on the separate EDGE Group for military production. Kuwait’s KIA, the oldest sovereign wealth fund in the world, has substantial assets but minimal domestic defense industry and found itself scrambling for air defense systems when Iranian strikes damaged Kuwait International Airport in March 2026. The lesson is clear: financial reserves alone do not constitute war-readiness. Sovereign funds that invest in the industrial capacity to defend their nations possess a form of security that no portfolio of listed equities can provide.

What Happens to Saudi Arabia’s Wealth Fund After the Guns Fall Silent?

The post-war PIF will not resemble the pre-war version. Three structural changes are likely to prove permanent regardless of how the Iran conflict concludes.

First, the defense allocation will remain elevated. Saudi Arabia entered the war importing 96 percent of its military equipment, a vulnerability that Iranian missiles have brutally illustrated. The political consensus for defense localization will survive any ceasefire. SAMI will receive sustained investment, and PIF’s defense portfolio — currently approximately 5 percent of assets — is likely to double over the next five years. The military the war demands will be built with PIF capital.

Second, the giga-projects will be restructured, not restored. The era of $500 billion moonshots died before the war, and the conflict merely provided the funeral. Post-war NEOM will focus on the green hydrogen plant, data centers, and Oxagon port infrastructure — industrial revenue generators rather than residential fantasies. The Red Sea and Qiddiya may proceed at reduced scale. The overall giga-project portfolio will likely shrink from 6 percent to 3-4 percent of PIF’s assets, freeing capital for defense, technology, and food security.

Third, food and agricultural investments will be treated as strategic assets rather than portfolio diversification. SALIC’s controlling stake in Olam Agri, its Brazilian and Australian agricultural holdings, and its partnerships with companies like Syngenta will be managed with the same urgency that defense assets receive. The lesson of Hormuz — that a shipping chokepoint can threaten 35 million people’s food supply — will reshape PIF’s agricultural strategy for a generation.

The deeper question is whether PIF emerges from the war as a stronger or weaker institution. The fund’s raw asset value may decline if war damages Aramco infrastructure or forces fire-sale disposals. But institutional capability — the ability to deploy capital quickly, manage complex supply chains, and operate across both civilian and defense economies — is being built under pressure in ways that peacetime never demanded. Mohammed bin Salman created PIF to build a Saudi Arabia that did not need oil. The Iran war may force PIF to become something more valuable: a sovereign institution that can keep Saudi Arabia functioning no matter what happens next.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much money does Saudi Arabia’s PIF manage?

PIF’s assets under management reached approximately $941 billion by early 2026, according to the Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute. The fund grew 19 percent in 2024, driven by government asset transfers and capital deployment across 13 strategic sectors. PIF’s target is to reach $2.67 trillion by 2030, though the Iran war and lower pre-war oil prices have complicated that timeline.

What is SAMI and how does it relate to PIF?

Saudi Arabian Military Industries is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Public Investment Fund, established in 2017 to build a domestic defense industry. SAMI operates across five divisions — aerospace, land, sea, defense systems, and advanced electronics — and aims to localize 50 percent of Saudi military spending by 2030. The Iran war has accelerated SAMI’s relevance, with $8.8 billion in defense contracts signed at the World Defense Show in February 2026.

How has the Iran war affected PIF’s giga-projects?

PIF’s giga-project portfolio, including NEOM, The Red Sea, and Qiddiya, has been effectively frozen by the conflict. Construction on The Line was already suspended in September 2025, and the war has diverted capital toward defense and food security. PIF recorded an $8 billion write-down on giga-projects in 2024. The surviving projects — NEOM’s green hydrogen plant and data center partnerships — are industrial rather than residential in nature.

Does PIF own Newcastle United?

PIF acquired an 80 percent stake in Newcastle United Football Club in October 2021 for approximately $410 million. The club won the Carabao Cup in 2025 under PIF ownership. The investment is part of PIF’s international sports and entertainment portfolio, which also includes stakes in the LIV Golf tour and multiple esports ventures. The war has not disrupted Newcastle’s operations but has increased political scrutiny of PIF’s global assets.

What is SALIC and why does it matter during the war?

The Saudi Agricultural and Livestock Investment Company is a PIF subsidiary that invests in global agricultural supply chains to secure Saudi food access. SALIC’s most significant wartime asset is its $1.78 billion controlling stake in Olam Agri, which operates across 30 countries. With the Hormuz strait closed and Gulf shipping disrupted, SALIC’s ability to source food through alternative global networks has become critical for feeding Saudi Arabia’s 35 million residents.

Is PIF the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world?

PIF is currently the fifth-largest sovereign wealth fund globally, behind Norway’s GPFG ($1.8 trillion), China Investment Corporation ($1.3 trillion), Abu Dhabi Investment Authority ($1.1 trillion), and Kuwait Investment Authority ($969 billion). PIF’s target of reaching $2.67 trillion by 2030 would make it the largest, though this timeline faces significant headwinds from the war and reduced oil revenue projections.