(Bloomberg) — Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund will step up efforts to boost returns and build portfolio companies into global champions as the kingdom contends with the economic costs of the Iran war.
The Public Investment Fund unveiled its 2026–2030 strategy, saying it would prioritize building competitive domestic ecosystems, unlocking the value of strategic assets and increasing the role of the private sector as a partner in economic development, according to a statement in the Saudi Press Agency.
Governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan said the new strategy, which structures its investments into three portfolios — vision, strategic and financial — represented “a natural next step” in the $1 trillion fund’s development. “It offers our partners more opportunities to invest in high-quality assets and ecosystems, alongside PIF,” he said.
The wealth fund has increasingly pushed to generate financial returns while acting as a catalyst for investment in the broader economy, rather than serving as a source of capital.
The updated strategy comes amid a two-week ceasefire between the US and Iran in a war that saw Gulf nations bear the brunt of the Islamic Republic’s attacks. Saudi Arabia’s oil and gas production and exports have been hampered by a series of strikes on critical energy infrastructure even as crude prices surged.
In the months before the conflict began, officials in Riyadh had started making tough spending decisions, ordering sweeping reviews of ambitious projects across the country and pivoting toward areas more likely to attract foreign investment.
Still, the war’s fallout makes advancing Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s Vision 2030 agenda to diversify the economy away from oil — in which the PIF plays a central role — even more challenging.
Under the 2026–2030 strategy, PIF has created a “vision portfolio” to integrate key sectors of the domestic economy and drive growth. The fund identified six priority ecosystems: tourism, travel and entertainment; urban development and livability; advanced manufacturing and innovation; industrials and logistics; clean energy, water and renewables infrastructure; and Neom.
Alongside this, a “strategic portfolio” will focus on actively managing key assets to maximize financial returns and economic impact, while supporting portfolio companies to attract capital and scale into global champions — as reported by Bloomberg News in October.
Since its inception, the PIF has established about 100 companies ranging from a new airline Riyadh Air to artificial intelligence firm Humain. As portfolio companies mature, the fund has been looking to tap outside investors including through initial public offerings.
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A third “financial portfolio” will manage the fund’s direct and indirect investments in global markets. The PIF’s internal rate of return has averaged about 7.2% since 2015, Al-Rumayyan said in September.
The plan dovetails with the kingdom’s broader goals of focusing on developing aspects of the local economy like tourism, entertainment and gaming, while potentially paring back some elements — including megaprojects like Neom. The fate of the project, located in a remote desert area in the country’s northwest, has been in question in recent months amid a slew of challenges including design and feasibility issues, Bloomberg News has reported.
At a press conference Wednesday, Al-Rumayyan said there is no cancellation of any Neom project, but there are delays so the fund can prioritize preparation for the World Expo in 2030, the FIFA World Cup in 2034 and AI investments.
More broadly, the wealth fund has remained active in global dealmaking, even amid the war. Savvy Games Group, a unit of the PIF, agreed to buy Moonton from ByteDance Ltd. in March in a deal valuing the mobile games maker at $6 billion, and more recently another affiliate committed an additional $550 million to electric-car maker Lucid Group Inc.
Al-Rumayyan had previously flagged the PIF’s intention to boost total annual capital deployment to $70 billion after 2025 and emphasized that its investments, in absolute dollar terms, will continue to rise abroad even as it focuses at home.
The wealth fund, which oversees more than $1 trillion, last year raised its 2030 target for assets to about $2.7 trillion.
(Adds detail on PIF strategy for portfolio companies; updates headline.)
