Aramco, IBM team up to advance industrial AI in Saudi Arabia
Collaboration spans agentic AI, automation and materials science at scale
#SaudiArabia #IndustrialAI – Saudi Arabia’s national energy company Aramco and IBM have announced a new collaboration to advance artificial intelligence, agentic AI, automation, materials science and other emerging technologies across Saudi Arabia’s industrial sector. Announced at IBM’s global flagship event THINK Boston, the collaboration combines IBM’s enterprise technology platforms, consulting expertise and research capabilities with Aramco’s industrial scale, extensive data assets and nine decades of energy-sector knowledge. Together, the two organisations will explore practical, high-impact AI applications across industrial and energy systems, including mission-critical environments.
SO WHAT? – Industrial AI is where the economics of agentic AI have so far become most tangible. Energy companies operate assets worth billions, run mission-critical infrastructure around the clock, and generate vast volumes of operational data. Applying agentic AI to reliability, safety and operational efficiency in that environment czn deliver truly transformational gains. The collaboration builds on Aramco’s long-standing partnership with IBM and the energy giant’s extensive AI and data analytics programmes, which contributed an estimated $2.6 billion in value during 2025.
KEY POINTS
Aramco and IBM have announced a collaboration to advance AI, agentic AI, automation, materials science and hybrid cloud technologies across Saudi Arabia’s industrial and energy sectors. The announcement was made at IBM’s THINK Boston global flagship event on 5th May 2026.
The collaboration combines IBM’s enterprise-grade technology platforms and research innovation with Aramco’s industrial scale, extensive operational data assets and energy-specific expertise accumulated over 90 years. Together they will develop practical, high-impact solutions for complex industrial challenges.
Industrial AI in mission-critical environments is a central focus. The two organisations will explore AI applications designed to enhance operational excellence, reliability and safety across energy systems. The cost of failure is high in such areas, and the value of autonomous, real-time decision-making is significant.
Agentic AI features prominently in the collaboration’s scope. As autonomous AI systems move into industrial operations, the ability to deploy them safely, reliably and at scale in energy infrastructure represents one of the most demanding — and valuable — test cases for the technology.
Materials science is also included in the collaboration’s remit, reflecting IBM’s research capabilities in applying AI to molecular modelling, chemical discovery and advanced materials. This could have long-term strategic relevance for an integrated energy and chemicals company of Aramco’s scale.
IBM brings a broad technology stack to the AI collaboration, including its hybrid cloud platform, Red Hat OpenShift, and enterprise AI capabilities. Aramco brings operational complexity and data assets at a scale few industrial organisations anywhere in the world can match.
The collaboration was announced in the presence of IBM Chairman and CEO Arvind Krishna and Aramco’s Senior Vice President of Digital and Information Technology Sami Al Ajmi, alongside senior executives from industry, the public sector and academia.
Aramco and IBM have worked together since 1947, building a relationship that has evolved through successive waves of technology. This latest collaboration represents the most ambitious phase of that partnership, moving into autonomous AI systems and advanced research domains.
ZOOM OUT – The new IBM collaboration lands at a moment when Aramco's AI programme is already delivering results at a scale few industrial organisations anywhere can match. In its full-year 2025 results, Aramco reported a Technology Realised Value (TRV) of $5.3 billion, with $2.6 billion directly attributable to AI-driven solutions across approximately 500 identified use cases. Cumulative TRV has reached $11.3 billion since 2023. Aramco has also deployed the Middle East's first industrial quantum computer, increased its AI computing capacity ten-fold to over 570 PetaFLOPs. Earlier thi syear, Aramco awarded a contract for the design, deployment and support of two new supercomputers to solutions by stc for its upstream business.
[Written and edited with the assistance of AI]
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