Saudi Arabia’s Mineral Gambit: The Bet Reshaping Global Supply Chains

The Kingdom just revalued its estimated in-situ mineral resource base to $2.5 trillion and set its sights on becoming a critical minerals superpower. Six hard-won lessons every government and business should steal.

Importantly, these figures represent geological resource estimates rather than proven, economically recoverable reserves at current prices.

Saudi Arabia: Key Figures at a Glance

When Saudi Arabia speaks, commodity markets listen

For seven decades that conversation was almost exclusively about oil. Today, the Kingdom is deliberately changing the subject, and it is doing so with a speed and structural ambition that should command serious attention from every government, mining executive, and supply-chain strategist on the planet.

In January 2026, Riyadh hosted the fifth Future Minerals Forum, drawing ministers and senior representatives from more than 100 countries, a gathering that has rapidly earned the nickname the “Davos of mining.” The event was not a mere spectacle. Saudi Arabia used the platform to announce a comprehensive National Minerals Program, the launch of its largest-ever exploration licensing round covering 13,000 square kilometers, a bold $110 billion long-term capital investment plan announced by state mining champion Ma’aden to significantly expand gold, phosphate and aluminium capacity over the next decade

Taken together, these moves crystallize a simple but profound strategic thesis: the world’s next geopolitical contest will not be fought over barrels of oil. It will be fought over tonnes of copper, cobalt, lithium, and rare earth elements, the building blocks of electric vehicles, renewable energy infrastructure, and artificial intelligence hardware. Saudi Arabia, which has watched its hydrocarbon leverage erode as the energy transition accelerates, intends to be indispensable in that new contest.

The question for the rest of the world is not whether Saudi Arabia will succeed. It is what everyone else can learn from how it is trying.

A Decade in the Making: How We Got Here

Saudi Arabia’s mineral ambitions did not emerge overnight. The Vision 2030 reform agenda launched in 2016 explicitly designated mining as the “third pillar” of the economy alongside oil and petrochemicals. What has changed dramatically is the pace.

• 2016

Vision 2030 names mining as the third economic pillar. Mineral wealth is estimated at roughly $1.3 trillion.

• 2022

Annual mine site exploration budget stands at $21 million. Mining tax rate cut from 45% to 20% under new investment law, signaling serious intent.

• 2024–25

Exploration spend reaches $146 million, a 595% increase from 2022. Ninth licensing round awards 172 sites. Ma’aden signed a memorandum of understanding with MP Materials to explore development of an integrated rare earth value chain. The joint venture between Saudi Aramco and Ma’aden is targeting the start of commercial lithium production as early as 2027, subject to pilot-scale and technology validation.

• Early 2026

Mineral wealth revalued upward to $2.5 trillion following new discoveries of rare earth elements and battery metals beyond traditional Arabian Shield belts. Ma’aden announces $110 billion investment plan. The National Minerals Program receives Cabinet approval. Exploration Enablement Program launched to cover up to 25% of drilling costs for investors.

The 90% upward revision in estimated mineral wealth since 2016, from approximately $1.3 trillion to $2.5 trillion, is not solely a geological story. It reflects what becomes possible when a government commits sustained capital to systematic geological surveying across a vast, previously underexplored landmass. Saudi Arabia surveyed 650,000 square kilometers of the Arabian Shield, nearly a third of its total territory. The lesson: you cannot monetize what you have not measured.

How Saudi Arabia Stacks Up

Context matters when evaluating any resource play. Below is a snapshot of how Saudi Arabia’s critical minerals ambition compares to other major producers and emerging competitors across the dimensions that matter most to investors and policymakers.

What distinguishes Saudi Arabia from this field is not the sheer size of its resource base, the DRC dwarfs it, but the combination of political stability, sovereign capital, strategic location between Asian and European markets, and a credible long-term state commitment that most competing jurisdictions cannot easily replicate.

Six Lessons the World Can Take From Saudi Arabia’s Playbook

Here’s all you need to take from the KSA playbook:

Lesson 01: Treat Geology as a Strategic Asset: Not a Lucky Accident

Saudi Arabia invested more than SAR 1 billion ($266 million) in geological surveys since 2016. The payoff was dramatic: new deposits of rare earth elements and battery metals discovered in areas outside traditional mining belts, directly contributing to the 90% upward revaluation of the Kingdom’s mineral wealth. Many resource-rich nations across Africa, Central Asia, and Latin America are sitting on comparable geological potential that remains systematically undersurveyed. Geological data is infrastructure. The countries that invest in it earliest will define the map of tomorrow’s supply chains.

Lesson 02: Price the Risk Down: Or Nobody Will Show Up

Saudi Arabia slashed its mining tax rate from 45% to 20%, launched an Exploration Enablement Program that covers up to 25% of drilling and laboratory costs for investors, and ran the largest licensing round in its history in 2025. The result: approximately $32 billion in announced and committed mining-sector investments to date, roughly a third of its $100 billion Vision 2030 target, within years of these reforms. Punitive fiscal regimes protect short-term state revenues at the cost of long-term sector development. The Indonesian nickel ban and Chile’s nationalization debates illustrate the same tension. Saudi Arabia chose to attract capital first, build the industry, then capture value downstream.

“The best leverage a resource-rich country can find is not in what it charges to extract, it is in how deeply it integrates what comes out of the ground into the global economy.”

Lesson 03: Own the Whole Chain, Not Just the Mine

Saudi Arabia is not content to ship raw ore Its “mine-to-motor” strategy is intended to link future domestic copper and lithium production with downstream manufacturing, including EV production by Lucid Motors and Ceer inside the Kingdom. Ma’aden’s MoU with MP Materials targets a vertically integrated rare earths value chain, from extraction through refining to magnet production. The Aramco-Ma’aden joint venture is targeting commercial lithium production by 2027. Raw commodity exporters consistently leave 60–80% of the value chain on the table. The minerals race is ultimately a processing and manufacturing race. Countries that recognize this early will capture a disproportionate share of the economic prize.

Lesson 04: Geopolitical Neutrality Is a Competitive Advantage

While the US moves to restrict China’s mineral access and Beijing tightens export controls on rare earths, Saudi Arabia has deliberately positioned itself as a non-aligned supplier. Riyadh hosted representatives from all G20 nations at the 2026 Future Minerals Forum, including the US, China, Russia, and the EU simultaneously. It is co-operating with the US on supply chain diversification while maintaining economic ties with China, its largest oil customer. In a bifurcating world, neutrality commands a premium. Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister captured the posture precisely: “Our objective is stability and calm.” That positioning is not merely diplomatic. It is a commercial strategy.

Lesson 05: Use Convening Power to Shape the Rules Before Others Do

The Future Minerals Forum has grown, in just four years, into one of the most influential global convening platforms for the critical minerals industry. Saudi Arabia did not join an existing conversation. It built a new forum, set the agenda, and ensured Riyadh is where deals are made and standards are shaped. Countries and companies that show up to define frameworks, rather than comply with them later, hold structural influence disproportionate to their market share. This is a lesson equally applicable to business: the company that convenes its industry’s standard-setting body rarely ends up disadvantaged by the resulting standard.

Lesson 06: Deploy Sovereign Capital Strategically: Not Just Domestically

Saudi Arabia is not limiting its mineral ambitions to its own soil. The Kingdom is involved in a US-backed venture to ship 50,000 tonnes of copper from the Democratic Republic of Congo through Saudi Arabia and the UAE, positioning the Gulf region as an alternative hub for non-Chinese mineral supply chains. This is Saudi capital effectively extending its strategic perimeter into Africa. Countries and sovereign wealth funds with fiscal firepower should view mineral supply chain investment as foreign policy, not just portfolio management. The Public Investment Fund’s involvement in Ma’aden and related ventures signals exactly this integration.

The Risks That Could Derail the Gambit

A credible assessment demands acknowledgment of the headwinds. Saudi Arabia’s mineral ambitions are bold, and bold bets carry meaningful risk.

• Water scarcityis perhaps the most acute operational constraint. Mining is water-intensive, and Saudi Arabia is one of the most water-scarce countries on Earth. Scaling to the Kingdom’s ambitions will require either significant desalination capacity or breakthroughs in dry-processing technology, both capital-intensive propositions.
• Workforce developmentat scale is another structural challenge. S&P Global notes that while exploration budgets have surged nearly 600% since 2022, the domestic pipeline of trained mining engineers, geologists, and metallurgists has not kept pace. Saudi Arabia has addressed this partly through international partnerships and joint ventures, but human capital remains a binding constraint on speed.
• Reserve replacementis a longer-term concern. Current copper reserves are estimated to last roughly 15 years at projected production rates, according to recent analysis by S&P Global. Ongoing exploration is essential, the exploration investments of today are the production capacity of the 2030s. Should exploration yields disappoint, the timeline compresses sharply.
• Commodity price volatilityposes a systemic risk to the investment case. The fiscal math underlying Ma’aden’s $110 billion plan is sensitive to gold, copper, and phosphate prices that have historically proven volatile. A sustained commodity downturn could compress margins and slow capital deployment, much as it has periodically derailed ambitions in comparable emerging mining jurisdictions.
• The governance premiumthat Saudi Arabia enjoys relative to peers like the DRC is real but not permanent. Sustaining investor confidence requires consistent regulatory application, transparent licensing, and credible dispute resolution, capabilities the Kingdom is building but has not yet stress-tested through a full commodity cycle.

What This Means for Businesses

For mining and metals companies, Saudi Arabia’s emergence represents a genuine new frontier, one with above-average political stability, improving fiscal terms, and sovereign capital actively seeking co-investment partners. The early movers on Ma’aden joint ventures and licensing rounds have positioned themselves well. The window for early-mover advantage will not remain open indefinitely.

For industrial manufacturers and technology companies worried about supply chain concentration in China, Saudi Arabia’s active cultivation of alternative supply chains, particularly in copper and rare earths, deserves serious attention in procurement and supplier diversification strategies.

For governments and policymakers, the clearest takeaway is structural: mineral wealth alone does not build a mining industry. What Saudi Arabia has demonstrated is that the combination of sustained exploration investment, competitive fiscal terms, downstream integration, and diplomatic convening power creates the conditions for an industry that foreign capital will fund. Geological endowment is necessary; it is not sufficient.

“Whoever controls the minerals controls the machines. And whoever controls the machines shapes the century.”

— Adel Al-Jubeir, Saudi Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Future Minerals Forum 2026

Saudi Arabia has read that sentence carefully and is acting on it. The rest of the world would do well to take it equally seriously.