There are just a handful of companies that have surpassed the $1 trillion market cap, including Google parent Alphabet, Microsoft, Saudi Aramco, Amazon and Apple. On Tuesday, California-based Nvidia's market cap jumped high enough to be among their ranks. The chipmaker, which makes graphics processing units (GPUs) that help power generative artificial intelligence platforms, has seen its stock price soar as more companies look to expand their AI offerings. Nvidia hit a market cap of $1 trillion Tuesday with shares opening at $405.95, although it eased below that milestone by midday after shares dipped below $404.86. The company's valuation puts it above Facebook parent company Meta, Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway and Elon Musk's Tesla.

Hong Kong-based drug discovery and development company Insilico has secured fresh capital at a time that its CEO described as a "biotech winter." The firm has raised $35 million on the heels of its last tranche in June, bringing its total Series D investment to $95 million. The new round was "oversubscribed", the firm's founder and CEO Alex Zhavoronkov told TechCrunch, declining to disclose the company's valuation. Prosperity7, the venture capital arm of Saudi Arabia's state oil company Aramco, led the new capital infusion. The fund has been actively scouring for opportunities in and around China that can scale globally and particularly in the Middle East.

Today Insilico Medicine announced the completion of a second closing of its Series D round, led by Prosperity7 Ventures, the diversified growth fund of Saudi Aramco Ventures, bringing the total Series D financing to $95 million. Other global investors with expertise in the biopharmaceutical and life sciences sectors also participated. The financing brought in Prosperity7 as a new investor, alongside current investors in the Series D round, including a large, diversified asset management firm on the US West Coast, B Capital Group, Warburg Pincus, BHR Partners, Qiming Venture Partners, Deerfield, Pavilion Capital, BOLD Capital Partners, and WS Investment Company. Insilico's founder and CEO, Alex Zhavoronkov, PhD, also invested in the Series D round. Insilico Medicine plans to grow its presence in Saudi Arabia, building on the recent investment from Prosperity7.

Jaka Robotics, a Chinese startup that makes collaborative robots, has just pulled in a hefty Series D funding round of over $150 million from a lineup of heavyweight investors to help it expand globally. The round is led by Singapore's sovereign wealth fund Temasek, TrueLight Capital, Softbank Vision Fund II, and Prosperity7 Ventures, a growth fund under Aramco Ventures, which is an investment subsidiary of Saudi Arabia's state oil firm Aramco. Collaborative robots, known as "cobots", are meant to work alongside humans rather than in isolation. Based out of Shanghai and Beijing, Jaka's robotic arms can augment humans in a range of tasks, from assembling electronic parts, pouring from a coffee machine to packaging smartphones. Jaka plans to spend its fresh funding on R&D and global expansion, which makes Prosperity7's investment all the more significant.

Lillian Pierson is a CEO & data leader that supports data professionals to evolve into world-class leaders & entrepreneurs. To date, she's helped educate over 1.3 million data professionals on AI and data science. Lillian has authored 6 data books with Wiley & Sons Publishers as well as 8 data courses with LinkedIn Learning. She's supported a wide variety of organizations across the globe, from the United Nations and National Geographic, to Ericsson and Saudi Aramco, and everything in between. She is a licensed Professional Engineer, in good standing.

Saudi's state-owned oil company announced today its plan to support artificial intelligence (AI) research in the kingdom. Aramco signed a memorandum of understanding with King Abdullah University of Science and Technology north of Jeddah to create a new research center for AI at the educational institution. The center will focus on research, development and marketing of AI technologies, the official Saudi Press Agency reported. The center will "provide a joint framework for working with Saudi Aramco in a close way to develop proper and quick solutions for the needs of the energy sector, among other relevant sectors," said university vice president Donal Bradley. Why it matters: Saudi Arabia is seeking to diversify its economy and rely less on oil as per the Vision 2030 initiative. The kingdom has had some success in this regard.

Energy giant Saudi Aramco says its 2021 net profit soared by more than 120 percent due to higher crude oil prices, as global economic growth recovered from a pandemic induced downturn. The announcement came on Sunday hours after Yemen's Houthi rebels – against whom Saudi Arabia leads a military coalition – targeted several locations, including Aramco facilities, in cross-border armed drone attacks. Aramco, Saudi Arabia's cash cow, did not say if the attacks caused any damage. "Aramco's net income increased by 124 percent to $110bn in 2021, compared to $49bn in 2020," the company said in a statement. Aramco achieved a net income of $88.2bn in 2019 before the coronavirus pandemic hit global markets, resulting in huge losses for the oil and aviation sectors, among others.

RIYADH, March 9, 2022 – Pasqal, a developer of neutral atom-based quantum technology, and ARAMCO announced the signing of an MoU to collaborate on quantum computing capabilities and applications in the energy sector. Objectives include accelerating the design and development of quantum based machine learning models as well as identifying and advancing other use cases for the technology across the Saudi Aramco value chain. To that end, both companies plan to explore ways for collaborating and cultivating the quantum information sciences ecosystem in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Quantum computing can be used to address a wide range of upstream, midstream and downstream challenges in the oil and gas industry including network optimization and management, reaction network generation and refinery linear programming. The collaboration will explore potential applications for quantum computing and artificial intelligence in these areas as well.

Around 70% of 96 strategic goals under Vision 2030 are related to data and AI. - The growing investment toward smart cities in Saudi Arabia results in massively increasing adoption of AI solutions along with 5G and software, such as predictive analytics. In 2021, Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman announced plans to build The Line, a 105-mile-long belt of hyper-connected communities in the kingdom's northeast that will feature no cars, no streets, and carbon emissions but will have smart infrastructure costing up to USD 200 billion.

Yet another country has gone to release the potential of artificial intelligence to fuel its economic growth plans. One of the largest oil manufacturing nations, Saudi Arabia, has now formulated and launched a nation-wide policy on AI. The project has been signed with approval from King Salman and aims to add the market value of up to 500 billion riyals (US$133 billion) in the country's GDP by 2030. The policy formulation had begun last year when the Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority (SDAIA) was established through a royal decree in August 2019 to lead the charge of the nation's transformation into a data-driven economy. Besides, the body is working on implementing a cloud platform, intending to build one of the biggest cloud frameworks in the Middle East by connecting 83 data centres controlled by over 40 government bodies.