Friday, July 24, 2026

The biggest bet of the week is not oil, it is atoms. On July 22, US Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman signed a peaceful nuclear cooperation agreement, the so-called 123 agreement, plus a bilateral safeguards accord, laying the legal foundation for what both sides call a decades-long, multi-billion-dollar partnership. The framework gives US companies priority access to supply reactors and fuel for the Kingdom's nuclear energy program, and follows up on talks completed during Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's visit to Washington last November (via Asharq Al-Awsat). The catch is enrichment: Wright said uranium enrichment is not part of the deal, while some US reports suggest it could allow domestic enrichment, and several Democratic lawmakers warn the pact could stoke a regional arms race. It now heads to Congress for review.

A quieter but far-reaching change landed by royal decree today: a new General Education Law that rewires how Saudi schooling is governed. It defines the roles of the Ministry of Education and a new General Education Affairs Council, and, crucially, opens a clearer path for private and non-profit operators to run schools under one set of rules, a package tied directly to Vision 2030, the Kingdom's economic diversification blueprint. The law also spells out learning pathways, e-learning, and the rights of students and teachers, and hands the ministry stronger tools to license, monitor and supervise (via Arab News). Officials frame it as a way to lift quality and widen options; the practical test will be how much private capital it actually pulls in.

The Tadawul, Saudi Arabia's main stock exchange, is having a steady rather than spectacular year, and steady is the point. The Tadawul All Share Index carried its year-to-date momentum through the first half of 2026, advancing about 2.9 percent as foreign capital kept flowing into the market (via Arab News). It is not a boom, but against a soft oil-price backdrop it signals confidence that the non-oil economy can carry more of the load.

The nuclear deal is also a markets story, not just a diplomacy one. Analysts told Asharq Al-Awsat that the civil nuclear agreement with the US strengthens Saudi Arabia's reliability and credibility in global markets, arguing it anchors long-term energy planning and gives international investors another reason to treat the Kingdom as a durable industrial partner rather than a pure petro-play (via Asharq Al-Awsat). The counterweight is the political risk hanging over the deal in Washington, which experts concede could slow the timeline even if it does not kill the partnership.

Saudi Arabia wants to be the Gulf's AI capital, and for now it is winning the argument. The head of the International Data Center Authority told Asharq Al-Awsat that the Kingdom leads the regional AI race, pointing to cheap energy, sheer economic scale and a long diversification runway as the reasons global operators are choosing Riyadh over rivals (via Arab News). The build-out is being driven by the Public Investment Fund's Humain venture alongside operators like Center3 and Mobily, with the country targeting several gigawatts of AI data-center capacity over the coming decade.

The venture money is following the compute. MENA startups raised roughly $1.7 billion across the first half of 2026 despite regional uncertainty, and Saudi Arabia was the single largest market, with fintech continuing to soak up the majority of local investment (via Wamda). The standout was quick-commerce platform Ninja, whose $250 million round pushed it to unicorn status, a reminder that logistics and delivery, not just AI, are minting the Kingdom's newest big names.

The most consequential social shift in the Kingdom is happening in the workforce, and it is being led by women. Female labor-force participation has climbed from around 23 percent in 2016 to more than 34 percent, women now own close to 45 percent of the country's small and medium-sized enterprises, and female unemployment has fallen from nearly 32 percent in 2018 to around 10.5 percent (via Arab News). It is one of the fastest changes in the region's labor market, and it is reshaping who runs shops, clinics and startups.

On the public-health front, the Ministry of Health said the 2026 Hajj season closed with no epidemic outbreaks or public-health threats, a notable outcome given the punishing summer heat that pushed temperatures toward 47 degrees Celsius at the holy sites (via Saudi Gazette). Authorities credited round-the-clock clinics, aggressive heat-protection messaging and staged crowd movement, a system built after the deadly 2024 heat disaster.

Saudi Arabia's sports spending is moving from buying stars to building the stadiums they play in. SURJ Sports Investment, a PIF company, has launched a new joint venture called radia with concert giant Live Nation and US venue operator Oak View Group to run the Kingdom's growing roster of stadiums, arenas and sports precincts, covering everything from early design review to day-to-day operations and commercialization (via Arab News). The move fits PIF's 2026-2030 strategy, which folds sports into a tourism and entertainment sector the fund expects to top $22 billion by 2030. The deal also lands amid antitrust scrutiny of Live Nation and Oak View Group's US partnership, a reminder that the Kingdom's sports push increasingly imports Western commercial muscle and its controversies.

Riyadh is about to get another mega-venue in its bid to keep residents' leisure spending at home. The capital is preparing for the grand opening of Seven Al-Hamra, a large entertainment complex and one of 14 projects in a roughly SR50 billion ($13.3 billion) plan to remake the country's leisure scene with cinemas, rides and family attractions (via Arab News). The pitch is simple: give Saudis, and Gulf tourists, reasons to spend at home rather than fly to Dubai, part of the wider tourism drive under Vision 2030.

For the roughly one million Filipinos in the Kingdom, the week's news is a mix of hardship cases and quiet safeguards. The Department of Migrant Workers said 49 distressed overseas Filipino workers sheltering at government-run Bahay Kalinga facilities in Jeddah and Al Khobar have been repatriated after employment troubles, with the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) providing financial aid, medical care, temporary shelter and transport home; the batch followed nearly 50 workers who returned from Riyadh earlier in July (via Philippine Daily Inquirer). It is a familiar pattern for the Kingdom's largest foreign community, and a reminder of how quickly a domestic or company dispute can leave a worker stranded.

On the prevention side, the DMW has rolled out new guidelines for approving job orders for Saudi-bound residential support workers and cleaners, adding job categories aimed at tighter protection and welfare, with a particular focus on safeguards for female OFWs (via Philippine Daily Inquirer). The rules, worked out with Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development, are meant to catch problems before deployment rather than after a worker is already in trouble.