How FII is helping shape the future architecture of global capital
By Johann Jenson, reporting from FII PRIORITY Miami for The Saudi Times
Johann Jenson is Founding Partner of NIAS.io, a Saudi-focused investment platform and network of private offices and institutional capital allocators.
The 4th edition of the Future Investment Initiative Institute’s FII PRIORITY Miami was not simply another investment conference. It increasingly acted as a geopolitical coordination point where the next architecture of global capital is being shaped.
Not architecture in the physical sense, though the Art Deco backdrop of Miami’s iconic FAENA Hotel & Forum provided plenty of that, but architecture in the capital-markets sense: who is structuring what, with whom, and around which platforms for the next phase of growth.
FAENA Hotel & Forum, venue of FII PRIORITY Miami 2026.
That, to me, was the real story in Miami.
Capital is no longer simply moving across borders. It is being designed into new systems of participation. And increasingly, Saudi Arabia is not just part of that picture. It is helping shape the frameworks through which global capital now moves.
Richard Attias, Chairman of the Executive Committee and Acting CEO of FII Institute, framed it well when he described FII as “a platform where ideas move, capital connects, decisions are shaped, and the future is not merely discussed but actively designed by leaders coming together.” That felt especially true in Miami, where the most important signals were often forming around the sessions rather than on stage.
Richard Attias speaks at FII PRIORITY Miami 2026.
The mix of participants reflected that shift. Miami brought together U.S.-based regulators, allocators, operators, technologists, and family offices who may not normally travel to Riyadh. There was less focus on who had capital, and more focus on who understood where the system was moving.
Several senior Saudi ministers who would normally have attended were unable to travel due to the evolving situation in the Gulf. Even so, participation from more than 300 FII members including 2,000 diplomats, investors, private office principals, and technology leaders from around the world underscored how engagement around the Kingdom’s transformation is increasingly being carried forward across institutional and private-sector channels alike.
Delegates at FII PRIORITY Miami 2026, where conversations increasingly centered on how global capital is being structured through new participation platforms linked to Saudi Arabia’s transformation agenda.
The presence of Ambassador HRH Reema bint Bandar Al Saud alongside senior representatives from U.S. and Gulf institutions reflected how economic dialogue around the Kingdom’s transformation continues to deepen alongside diplomatic coordination.
Tala Al Jabri, Managing Partner of Wyld VC, a firm backing AI-native companies with a presence in the Middle East and the United States, told The Saudi Times:
“Even with the recent political happenings in the background, investor confidence in opportunities in Saudi Arabia remains strong, especially around AI. Building bridges between ecosystems is now essential, and alignment between American and Saudi founders and investors is strengthening.”
Gayatri Sarkar, founder and CEO of Advaita Capital, a growth-stage venture firm investing in frontier technologies including Neuralink, xAI, and Cohere, told The Saudi Times that FII reflects the depth of the long-term partnership between Saudi Arabia and the United States.
“Cooperation today goes far beyond traditional diplomacy. It increasingly includes physical AI, next-generation chips, space innovation, and biotechnology. The Kingdom’s long-term commitment to technology development gives venture capitalists like us hope and confidence to expand partnerships across Saudi Arabia.”
That shift in tone reflects a larger one in the market. A few years ago, conversations about Saudi Arabia often centered on outbound capital, giga-project headlines, or sheer scale. In Miami, the discussion had matured. The emphasis now is increasingly on participation: how others invest alongside Saudi, through Saudi, and increasingly into platforms being built in the Kingdom.
H.E. Yasir Al-Rumayyan speaks at the FII PRIORITY Miami summit.
Participants told The Saudi Times that the shift from capital deployment toward capital participation frameworks is one of the clearest signals emerging from this year’s Miami discussions. H.E. Yasir Al-Rumayyan, Governor of the Public Investment Fund and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the FII Institute, captured that change directly in his conversation with Robert Smith of Vista Equity Partners when he said, “Now we are at a stage where we want to invite the whole world to invest in Saudi.”
In Miami this year, it sounded operational.
Investors in the room understood what that implied. Saudi Arabia is moving from being seen primarily as a source of capital to becoming a platform through which global capital can participate. Expansion by several major global asset managers including BlackRock and Franklin Templeton reflects that shift.
Adel Hamaizia of Highbridge Advisory made the point clearly in describing U.S.-Saudi ties as increasingly institutional and capital-driven, with sovereign wealth funds at the center of the relationship across energy, AI, and advanced industry cooperation. In practical terms, that means the relationship is no longer episodic. It is becoming structural.
Shahid Khan, Senior Partner and Global Head of Media, Entertainment, Sports and Culture at Arthur D. Little, told The Saudi Times that Miami confirmed Saudi Arabia’s shift from capital provider to architect of global investment platforms aligned with Vision 2030. He highlighted three themes shaping investor discussions: AI as a core engine of value creation, expanding cross-border capital flows connected to the Kingdom, and the rising importance of integrated platforms over standalone assets.
What also stood out in Miami was the visibility of Saudi private offices and family businesses alongside sovereign institutions in shaping that next phase. Musaab Al-Muhaidib, board member of Al-Muhaidib Group and Chairman of Masdar Group, put it well:
“As a Saudi family business committed to Vision 2030, we see ourselves as partners in delivering the Kingdom’s transformation. That includes supporting the energy transition, enabling manufacturing capabilities, and advancing real estate development through public-private partnerships and joint ventures.”
More telling was his observation: “It was important for us to be present at FII PRIORITY Miami to represent both our group and the broader Saudi private sector. These platforms are no longer just about ideas, but about turning partnerships into tangible outcomes.”
The Saudi private sector is no longer adjacent to the transformation. It is increasingly one of the vehicles through which the transformation is being implemented.
Infrastructure and resilience remain the backbone of all of this. H.E. Mohammed Al-Jadaan, Minister of Finance of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia referenced the recent operational use of the East-West crude oil pipeline, built four decades ago, as a reminder that physical infrastructure still underpins long-term competitiveness even as attention shifts toward artificial intelligence.
Across sessions, AI was treated less as a sector and more as a capability layer. Leaders from PIF, HUMAIN, and NEOM emphasized that serious investors are now focusing on compute, deployment environments, workforce adaptation, and above all energy.
Tareq Amin, Chief Executive Officer of HUMAIN, told The Saudi Times: “To really excel in AI, there’s a core component that one must have: energy. Saudi Arabia could really excel at that.” His remarks reflected a growing recognition across discussions in Miami that the next phase of AI competition will be shaped not only by models and software, but by access to power, compute infrastructure, and deployment-scale capacity.
One participant summarized the mood nicely: you can have the best algorithms in the world, but if you do not have the energy infrastructure to power them, none of it matters.
That line stayed with me because it gets to the heart of what many still underestimate. The AI cycle is not just a software cycle. It is an infrastructure cycle. And increasingly, it is a physical infrastructure cycle.
Ibrahim Neyaz, Chief Executive Officer of the National Technology Development Program (NTDP), emphasized that attracting talent, strengthening local capabilities, and building innovation platforms are all essential if advanced technologies are going to translate into real economic opportunity. Capital alone is not enough without the surrounding capability.
Some investors raised practical questions about execution bandwidth, compute access constraints, chip supply sensitivity, and the rising energy intensity of large-scale AI deployment. What stood out, however, was that Saudi Arabia is addressing these challenges as a system rather than as isolated sector issues, aligning energy capacity, industrial strategy, regulatory adaptation, and capital formation in parallel.
Domestically, sustained non-oil growth, the expansion of local asset-manager platforms, and technology programs led by MCIT, NTDP, and HUMAIN point to a coordinated effort to build frontier capability in parallel with infrastructure deployment.
Partnerships emerging around HUMAIN illustrate how coordination inside the Kingdom is already translating into deployment infrastructure rather than remaining conceptual. As Jonathan Siddharth of Turing who provides an enterprise-scale AI agent marketplace noted to The Saudi Times in connection with the company’s collaboration with HUMAIN, “superintelligence should not remain abstract. It should deliver productivity, increase ease of use, and unlock humanity’s untapped potential.” The focus is increasingly on implementation across government and enterprise environments rather than experimentation alone.
From left to right: Jonathan Siddharth, CEO and Co-Founder of Turing; Tareq Amin, CEO of HUMAIN; Nitin Sathawane, Head of Growth at Turing; and Saejong Lee, GM and VP of Product at HUMAIN, at FII PRIORITY Miami 2026, where AI infrastructure featured prominently in discussions shaping the next phase of global technology investment.
Execution risk remains part of any transformation at this scale. But the combination of sovereign balance sheet strength, long-horizon infrastructure investment, expanding participation from global asset managers, and a clear strategy to crowd in private and family-office capital is precisely what allows investors to begin moving from observation to participation. The conversation in Miami suggested that the question is no longer whether capital will engage with these platforms, but how early and through which structure investors will be able to enter.
Panelists including Éric Martel of Bombardier, Fatih Özmen of Sierra Nevada Corporation, Dr. Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski of the Perimeter Institute, and Thorold Barker discuss the future of aerospace investment at FII PRIORITY Miami 2026, where demand growth, advanced manufacturing, and technological sovereignty were key themes shaping long-term capital allocation.
Another comment that stayed with me came from Waterloo-based theoretical physicist Dr. Sabrina Pasterski, often described as one of the leading voices in next-generation gravitational physics. She noted how unusual it still is to see science, capital, and policy brought together early enough to shape real collaboration rather than react to it later. Frontier theory, applied AI, advanced manufacturing, robotics, and both sovereign and private capital are no longer operating in separate worlds. They are increasingly converging into a single value-creation chain.
Similar themes emerged across discussions involving research leaders from Columbia University and MIT Sloan.
And that, ultimately, may be the biggest takeaway from Miami.
AI is already compressing parts of the knowledge economy. Physical AI, increasingly through robotics, will extend that shift into the industrial economy and parts of highly skilled labor once considered insulated. The distance between invention, production, deployment, and monetization is shrinking rapidly. The supply chain of value creation is collapsing inward.
When that happens, strategic capital deployment matters more. So do technology infrastructure and trusted relationships. Yet energy matters most of all.
Because none of this scales without power.
That is why the Kingdom will be central to this next phase. Saudi Arabia has the ambition, the balance sheet, the institutional will, the energy advantage, and increasingly the ecosystem to become one of the places where this new stack gets built.
From inside the conversations in Miami this year, that no longer felt theoretical.
It felt in motion.
Reporting from FII PRIORITY Miami this year, The Saudi Times observed a consistent shift across conversations with investors, policymakers, and operators alike: the next phase of global capital formation is already being structured through partnerships emerging around the Kingdom. As these platforms continue to develop, FII is increasingly where those relationships first become visible and where the architecture of the next global investment cycle is already beginning to take shape.
Published by Boudou Gueffai | Editor-in-Chief | The Saudi Times
