Saudi-French Investment Roundtable Targets New Deals as Bilateral Trade Reaches 44.2 Billion Riyals
Saudi Arabia and France convened senior officials, business leaders and company executives in Paris on Monday for a new investment roundtable, with agreements and memoranda of understanding expected across industry, logistics, artificial intelligence and digital infrastructure.
The Saudi Ministry of Investment said the meeting would focus on industrial partnerships, transport and logistics, artificial intelligence and digital infrastructure, as the two countries seek to convert a broad strategic relationship into new investments and operating projects. Several agreements and memoranda of understanding are expected to be signed.
The meeting takes place against a commercial relationship that, on figures cited by the Federation of Saudi Chambers and published by the Saudi Press Agency in June, reached 44.2 billion riyals in 2025, up 7.2 percent from a year earlier.
| Saudi-French economic baseline | Figure |
|---|---|
| Bilateral trade, 2025 | 44.2bn riyals |
| Equivalent at 3.75 riyals per dollar | 11.79bn dollars |
| Trade growth, 2025 | +7.2% |
| Implied 2024 trade | ~41.2bn riyals |
| Increase during 2025 | ~3.0bn riyals |
| 2023 Paris forum agreements | 24 |
| Disclosed value, 2023 agreements | ~2.9bn dollars |
Working back from the 2025 total, bilateral trade was about 41.2 billion riyals in 2024, so trade expanded by roughly 3.0 billion riyals, about 790 million dollars, during 2025, our calculation. At the riyal’s fixed rate the 44.2 billion riyal total is equivalent to about 11.79 billion dollars. The relationship is already substantial, but the more important shift is that investment cooperation is moving beyond the annual flow of traded goods into long-duration industrial, infrastructure and technology projects, which is where today’s agenda is concentrated.
The previous major Saudi-French investment forum in Paris, in June 2023, produced 24 memoranda and investment agreements with a disclosed value of about 2.9 billion dollars, across healthcare, clean energy, hospitality and culture. That package was equivalent to about 10.9 billion riyals at the peg, roughly a quarter of the entire 2025 bilateral trade relationship and about 3.7 times the incremental increase in trade recorded during 2025, our calculation. Announced investment values do not translate immediately into output, and some memoranda take years to develop or do not proceed, but project-based commitments can operate at a scale large enough to reshape the economic relationship.
Existing projects show the potential scale. Saudi Aramco owns 62.5 percent of SATORP, the Jubail refining joint venture, with France’s TotalEnergies holding 37.5 percent, and the plant has capacity of about 460,000 barrels a day. The two companies are developing the 11 billion dollar Amiral petrochemical complex integrated with SATORP, with engineering and construction contracts awarded in 2023, and Saudi Arabia granted an investment agreement in April 2026 to support the linked downstream industries. The Amiral investment alone is equivalent to about 93 percent of the 11.79 billion dollar value of all Saudi-French bilateral trade in 2025, our calculation, a multiyear capital project set against a single year of trade, which illustrates how large strategic investments increasingly shape the relationship alongside conventional trade.
Today’s roundtable broadens that model toward newer sectors. Industrial partnerships and transport remain established areas, but artificial intelligence and digital infrastructure move the relationship toward sectors in which capital is tied to computing capacity, data infrastructure and advanced technology, where the return depends on more than the headline amount: projects that establish domestic production, infrastructure, technology transfer or local operating capacity contribute simultaneously to investment, productivity and the non-oil economy.
Why it matters: The roundtable is a test of whether Saudi-French cooperation is moving from broad strategic commitments into projects with measurable capital deployment and implementation timetables. The benchmarks are already set: bilateral trade of 44.2 billion riyals last year, the 2.9 billion dollars of agreements from the 2023 Paris forum, and an existing 11 billion dollar petrochemical development. Against those numbers, the agreements signed will show whether this round is incremental cooperation or a step up in scale.
Outlook: No official aggregate value has been published for the agreements expected in Paris, and The Edge is not treating any circulating figure as an announced total. The meaningful measure will come once the individual agreements are disclosed: their combined value, whether they are binding contracts or memoranda, the new capital involved, the sectors receiving it and the implementation timetable.
Sources: Saudi Ministry of Investment; Saudi Press Agency; Federation of Saudi Chambers; TotalEnergies; Saudi Aramco.
