THIS MORNING: Happy (early) Founding Day

Good morning, ladies and gents, and happy THURSDAY. We hope your first Iftar was joyous and warm, and that the usual endearing chaos of large family gatherings was (somewhat) tolerable.

Our big story today: Humain invested USD 3 bn in Elon Musk’s AI company xAI, cementing its partnership with the world’s richest man and securing a minority stake just before the company merged with his other venture SpaceX.

ALSO- Maersk’s APM snapped up a stake in Jeddah terminal, and Actis’ Sherif El Kholy turns the attention to battery energy storage and grid infrastructure investments as necessary for data center buildout.

**PROGRAMMING NOTE- EnterpriseAM Saudi will be off on Sunday to celebrate Founding Day. We wish you a happy long weekend, and we will be back in your inboxes first thing Monday morning.

Watch this space

Riyadh appears to be closing the loophole that allowed consultants and executives to service Saudi clients without relocating. Saudi authorities have reportedly stepped up scrutiny of business visa applications, increasingly rejecting filings from UAE-based professionals whose travel patterns suggest they are working in the Kingdom rather than visiting, AGBI reports.

The crackdown targets the “commuter model”: Authorities are now flagging “travel frequency, length of stay and the nature of activities undertaken, particularly where patterns resemble full-time employment,” Abdulrahman Alfahad, a client relationship manager at Sovereign PPG Corporate Services, told the outlet.

It’s a volume issue: The shift follows what Abeer Husseini, a partner at immigration law firm Fragomen, calls “scaled misuse” of visas that were never intended for revenue-generating work.

Why it matters: If the trend is true, this removes the friction-free option to service the Kingdom remotely, forcing firms to either relocate reluctant staff (which is expensive), hire locally (which is challenging), or risk having their consultants turned away at the border.

DEFENSE — Lockheed Martin is targeting full operations at its Saudi software facility by the fourth quarter of the year, Chief Executive and Vice President for Saudi Arabia and Africa Joseph Rank told Asharq Business (watch, runtime: 2:16) on the sidelines of the World Defense Show. The site is currently in trial phase and hasn’t yet reached full capacity, he said.

The plant’s role will extend beyond Lockheed Martin’s own needs, with the capacity to provide software services to other commercial entities in the Kingdom and support local suppliers, he added.

IN CONTEXT- Lockheed’s second technical play is on the way, with the company partnering with Pioneers Technical Systems to establish the Kingdom’s first PAC-3 ground depot, which will test, repair, and certify launcher components for the Royal Saudi Air Defense Forces’ Patriot missile defense system.

Data point

SAR 15.3 bn — that’s the total value of consumer spending via point-of-sale (PoS) in the Kingdom in the week ending 14 February, down 4.8% w-o-w, according to the Saudi Central Bank’s latest weekly report (pdf). The number of transactions also saw a slight cooling, falling 1.6% w-o-w to 252.1 mn. The dip follows an increase in the previous weeks as household spending patterns begin to normalize ahead of the start of Ramadan.

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The big story abroad

Don’t hold your breath waiting for the Fed to continue its easing policy. Minutes from the Federal Reserve’s January meeting showed that policymakers anticipated “slower and more uneven than generally expected” progress toward its inflation target of 2%. That said, Fed members indicated that keeping rates steady would “likely be appropriate […] for some time as the committee carefully assesses incoming data.”

The greenback was slightly elevated by the news in early trading, maintaining earlier gains against the JPY and the EUR.

ALSO- Social media giant Meta is in hot water after its CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified incourt that the company no longer seeks to maximize the time spent by users on its platforms and bars kids under 13 from logging on. The CEO’s claims ran counter to internal emails and documents indicating otherwise.