We identify Sanabil Investments' top priorities across data management, cybersecurity, restaurant tech, and more.
Saudi Arabia’s massive Public Investment Fund, with $620B in assets under management, is one of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world. Its aim is to help diversify the country’s economy away from oil, with investments focused locally and globally.
The fund’s venture arm, Sanabil Investments, is ramping up while venture activity as a whole is pulling back. Not only did Sanabil Investments’ deal activity increase last year, but it’s also investing more capital year-over-year — the venture arm now commits roughly $3B a year in capital, up from $2B in 2021. In April 2023, the state oil company Saudi Aramco gave Sanabil a 4% stake, worth almost $80B, to further solidify the venture arm’s position.
So, where does Sanabil Investments focus its venture investing?
Looking broadly, roughly half of the companies that Sanabil Investments has backed are US-based. It mainly doles out deals to mid- or late-stage companies — only about 1 in 10 deals are early-stage. (Sanabil Investments also runs a joint accelerator with 500 Startups; however, we excluded this activity from our analysis.)
Using CB Insights data, we mapped how Sanabil Investments spreads its deals across more than a dozen industries, including data management, cybersecurity, restaurant tech, healthcare, and auto & transportation.
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