Poring over the SpaceX IPO prospectus, a recurring theme surfaces: the massive, quiet influence of Middle Eastern finance in the most ambitious IPO in history.
Sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, their AI subsidiaries and the technology companies building data centers as part of these deals were all in the document.
SpaceX lists on Nasdaq June 12 at a $1.75 trillion valuation. The S-1, as the IPO filing is known, shows Elon Musk’s rocket and satellite company is looking to sell up to $75 billion in shares. Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund alone is in talks to put in $5 billion.
ChatGPT, Claude, and Grok, three of the most widely used AI tools in the U.S., are all partly funded by Middle Eastern governments. For the millions of U.S. professionals who open these tools at work, the source of that money matters.
Unlike venture capital, sovereign wealth comes with conditions, and those conditions almost always involve building AI infrastructure on the investing country’s own soil. Those deals are putting AI data centers in the Middle East, not in the U.S.
