The US clears a potential USD 5.75 bn arms sale to Saudi Arabia

Good morning, wonderful people. It’s a tech-forward morning, and the throughline is scale — who’s building it, who’s funding it, and who’s finally getting a slice.

Humain is the anchor. The PIF’s AI arm is funding a two-track expansion off offtake agreements so bankable they let it borrow more through a war that's made everyone else borrow less. Deloitte is working the same wave from the services side, betting the next round of Saudi AI spending drags experiments into full production — PIF among its clients. The shared wager: all that gigawatt-scale compute becomes the layer the rest of the economy quietly runs on.

AND- Leap closed its four-day run on the little guys. The final day pushed more than USD 41 mn down to Saudi founders across fintech, autos, logistics, and e-commerce. Highlights below.

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Riyadh re-arms

The US State Department has cleared a potential USD 5.75 bn arms sale to Saudi Arabia, including a USD 5 bn package of Joint Direct Attack Munition-Extended Range (JDAM-ER) systems and USD 750 mn worth of AGT-1500 engines, according to the US state department. The approvals cover potential sales, with final procurement subject to the US foreign military sales process and applicable agreements.

The details: The package covers roughly 10k JDAM guidance kits — the technology that converts unguided bombs into precision weapons — along with 10k general-purpose bombs in the 500-lb and 2k-lb classes, plus fuzes, target detectors, and support services. Boeing is the principal contractor for the JDAM-ER package, while Honeywell would supply the AGT-1500 engines.

Saudi Arabia is replenishing across multiple fronts. “Despite having one of the region’s strongest air defense networks, Saudi Arabia, like other GCC states, is seeking to replenish its air defense stockpiles,” Albert Vidal, Research Associate for Middle East Defence Industry & Procurement at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, tells EnterpriseAM. The Kingdom has also reportedly asked South Korea to speed up deliveries of contracted air defense batteries and shown interest in Ukrainian interceptor UAVs and electronic warfare systems in recent months, Vidal says.

REMEMBER- Washington cleared a potential sale of 730 Patriot missile interceptors worth USD 9 bn in January and another potential sale this summer of 10k APKWS-II guided rockets worth USD 2 bn. Vidal says the relatively low-cost rockets are highly effective against Iranian drones.

Crude slips

Saudi’s observed crude exports fell to their lowest level in at least nine years in August, dropping to around 3 mn bbl / d as tanker attacks disrupted the shipping routes the Kingdom relies on, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, Vortexa, and Kpler.

The Red Sea route is the problem. Saudi Arabia shifted most exports to Yanbu after Iran effectively shut the Strait of Hormuz in late February, pushing loadings to 4.3 mn bbl / d in June from 770k bbl / d in January. Houthi attacks and the subsequent blockade have since reversed that recovery, with Yanbu exports falling to 3.7 mn bbl / d in July and 2.25 mn bpd in August. Two more tankers carrying Saudi crude were struck in Hormuz last week, including a Bahri vessel on which two seafarers were killed.

Customers are getting nervous. Some have become reluctant to use the Kingdom’s Red Sea ports, prompting Riyadh to consider routing cargoes around Africa, adding thousands of miles to supply chains already stretched by six months of conflict.

And the timing is punishing, coming just as loadings showed early signs of recovery at Ras Tanura, last week’s US strikes on Iranian military targets and Iran’s retaliation toward Gulf states hosting US bases pushed Brent above USD 95 a barrel, its highest since late July.

Putting together a team

PIF-backed Humain appears to be taking concrete steps toward a stock market listing, with CEO Tareq Amin announcing the formation of an “IPO preparation team,” he said in a LinkedIn post. The company is seeking candidates with top-tier management consulting and IPO experience. No timeline or listing size was disclosed.

REMEMBER- Humain first disclosed its listing plans in October 2025, when Amin indicated a possible dual IPO on Tadawul and Nasdaq within three to four years. Amin also hinted at potential equity investments from the firm's chip suppliers, which include Nvidia, AMD, Qualcomm, and Groq. This coincided with a non-binding agreement between PIF and Aramco for the energy giant to acquire a significant minority stake in Humain.

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The big story abroad

The battle for control of the Strait of Hormuz continues to escalate, with US forces striking three Iranian crude oil tankers — permanently disabling two — after Iran targeted two US Navy warships, according to a statement by US Central Command. No US personnel were harmed, it said. The exchange of fire follows renewed US military strikes against Iranian targets after a month of relative quiet in the six-month conflict.

What is Tehran saying? The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps reportedly stated that it targeted three oil tankers taking "unauthorized routes" through the Strait of Hormuz, along with three US-affiliated vessels in other areas. Iranian news media reported that four US missiles struck a tanker near Kharg anchorage without casualties, and the crew was evacuated.

US jobs swell in August: The US Labor Department announced that the US economy created 162k jobs last month, comfortably beating expectations and signaling a rebound from the early-summer slowdown in employment growth. The unemployment rate held steady at a historically low 4.1%, signaling a healthy labor market.

Anthropic to list before midterm elections: Anthropic plans to begin promoting its IPO no earlier than mid-October, targeting a stock market debut shortly before the US midterm elections in November, unnamed sources tell Reuters. The AI startup was expected to publish its IPO prospectus as early as next week, but sources now say that key filing is delayed until late September.

Is RAMageddon upon us? The AI investment boom is driving up the cost of memory chips and other components, triggering a price hike for phones, laptops and gaming consoles by as much as 20%, and reversing the decades-long trend of cheaper and more powerful electronics. Meanwhile, the cost of dynamic random-access memory has risen fivefold in 2026, as chipmakers stop or slow down production of lower-end chips.