The Saudi investment fund sits between big ambitions and tight liquidity. A clear look at stalled projects, new rules and rising pressure.
From the outside it looks like endless wealth, inside the Saudi investment fund feels more like a shoe that is suddenly too tight.
The story of Saudi Arabia stays fascinating. In Washington, the crown prince sits down with Trump and a circle of American CEOs, and casually says his country will invest a trillion dollars in the United States. No details. Only bravado. It fits the image many people still have of the Saudi investment fund. Always money. Always growth. Always bigger. But behind that glossy surface a different tone is rising. A tone of pressure, of capital tied up in slow projects, of teams in Riyadh working through the night to stop the machine from stalling.
Anyone who talks to people in Riyadh or bankers who track the fund closely hears the same thing. The Saudi investment fund is bumping into its own limits. The ambitions did not shrink, but the room to operate feels tighter. Meetings take longer. Decisions take more time. The fund is being reshaped from the inside, almost silently, as if someone in the engine room is shouting that something is overheating while the deck above keeps pretending everything is smooth.
A big part of the tension comes from the mega projects that once symbolised the future of the kingdom. Neom was the crown jewel. A futuristic zone with robot workers, marble beaches and a ski resort in the desert. The reality is less glamorous. Delay after delay. Leadership replaced. Budgets rewritten. It sounds big, but it feels small when you hear that the luxury Red Sea resorts remain largely empty.
Other projects tell the same story in their own way. A national coffee chain that dreams of expanding abroad but has one single store. A cruise line with one ship. An electric car company that has existed for three years and has delivered zero cars. Billions are locked up in plans that look impressive in presentations but barely generate revenue in practice.
The pressure grows further when you look at the macro picture. Saudi Arabia still has massive oil reserves, but output is restricted by international agreements. Oil prices remain low. That means less revenue for the state. That means rising deficits. That means more borrowing to keep domestic promises alive. The Saudi investment fund has become less of a portfolio investor and more of a political instrument that must support jobs, image and prestige projects.
Reshaping the fund behind closed doors
Looking at its history, the fund used to be simple. Founded in 1971, focused on local banks and utilities. A few dozen employees. Roughly a hundred billion in assets. Quiet. Plain. Predictable.
That changed the moment Mohammed bin Salman took control of the fund in 2015, at age twenty-nine. From that moment it was presented as reborn. Extra government money flowed in. New loans were taken. A slice of daily oil revenue was diverted directly into the fund. On top of that came assets seized during the anti corruption campaign, where businessmen and princes were held in a hotel and their wealth was transferred to the state.
Officially the fund now claims nearly one trillion dollars in assets. But much of it is illiquid, hard to sell and impossible to value publicly. The spokesperson mentions sixty billion in cash and liquid instruments. On paper that sounds fine, but it feels small once you place it next to all the commitments and promises.
The real power sits with Yasir al Rumayyan, the governor of the fund. He sails his own yacht, sits next to Trump at a UFC fight and corrects visitors who pronounce the fund’s name the wrong way. Under his leadership the fund invested in Uber, Citi, Formula 1 and the English club Newcastle United. It also built a large position in US stocks during the Covid market dip, which turned out well. But even he now faces the limits of the model.
At the annual Future Investment Initiative, once the Davos of the desert, the tone shifted. Investors were told that new capital will only be provided if they also help finance older Saudi projects that are not doing well. A kind of tied deal. Taking money means putting money back into the kingdom. Even the company that runs the conference itself, mostly owned by the fund, is being pushed toward an IPO to free up cash.
That might be the clearest signal of all. When you have to sell your own flagship event to raise liquidity, the room to manoeuvre is not as wide as you pretend it is.
New dreams, old constraints
Meanwhile the fund keeps chasing new frontiers. Artificial intelligence. New technology. And of course the bid to buy a controlling stake in gaming giant Electronic Arts. Officially a long-term investment. Unofficially helped by the fact that the crown prince is an enthusiastic gamer himself. Personal preference and national strategy sometimes blend in ways that feel awkward.
Between the lines you sense that everyone is trying to keep the myth of unlimited capacity alive. But the facts are straightforward. The promises grow larger. The liquid capital grows smaller. And the pressure on the Saudi investment fund increases month by month.
Maybe this is less a story about money and more a story about limits. About what happens when ambition grows faster than the foundation that needs to carry it. Even a wealthy country can discover that you cannot build everything at the same time, especially when so many projects are still barely out of the design phase.
A small nuance is that sometimes things grow faster in the imagination than in reality.
The final picture is clear. A kingdom that wants to think big, but is now being forced to look again at its balance sheet. A fund that once symbolised unstoppable power, but is now learning the quiet rules of economics and time.
