Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Al Saud is the founder of Kingdom Holding, a conglomerate that has stakes in hotels, aviation, real estate and other industries. The Riyadh-based group's stock investments include Citigroup and JD.com. He's a major shareholder in Elon Musk's artificial intelligence and social networking company, Xai.
Alwaleed's most valuable asset is a 78% stake in publicly traded Kingdom Holding. His stake is down from 95% after he sold 625 million shares to Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund, in 2022 for $1.5 billion.
Upon his release from detention during Saudi Arabia's corruption crackdown, Alwaleed made an arrangement with the Saudi government. In a 2018 interview, he said the confidential agreement is a "confirmed understanding, going forward" and wouldn't elaborate. A representative for Alwaleed disputes media reports that he made substantial payments to the Saudi authorities. No payments are reflected in the calculation since none are confirmed to have been made.
Alwaleed owns land in and around Riyadh, a 420-room palace, the top three floors of Kingdom Centre, and other Saudi residences that he values at $5 billion. A 10% liquidity discount is applied to his figure.
He also has a majority stake in media company Rotana. Other than publicly listed assets, most of his assets are closely held and included on the basis of "fair market" valuations provided by Alwaleed as of April 6, 2026.
He values his stakes in companies throughout the Middle East at $220 million and investments outside of the region -- including shares in public companies such as Citigroup and JD.com -- at $190 million. He also directly owns 25.6 million shares of Snap.
A longtime shareholder in X, he also invested invested personally and via Kingdom in Elon Musk's Xai. Xai was acquired by SpaceX in February 2026 and the merged entity is valued based on recent funding rounds, giving a combined value of $1.03 trillion. While the company was valued at $1.25 trillion for the purposes of merger calculations, this valuation isn't used here because no new money was raised. A 5% liquidity discount is applied.
He declined to provide details about his equity holdings, most of which couldn't be verified because he holds less than 5% of the companies.
The self-proclaimed Warren Buffett of Arabia is one of the most public members of the Saudi royal family. The prince is the son of Prince Talal and Princess Mona El-Solh, daughter of Lebanon's first prime minister, Riad El Sohl. He is also a nephew of the late Saudi ruler, King Abdullah. Alwaleed split time between Saudi Arabia and Lebanon while growing up.
He moved to the US to study business at Menlo College in California in 1975. He returned to Saudi Arabia after graduating and began investing in real estate with a $30,000 loan from his father. In his biography, "Alwaleed: Billionaire, Businessman, Prince," Alwaleed said he made his first billion dollars selling land and serving as a point man for multinational companies angling for local contracts.
He drew attention from the international investing community in 1991, when he invested $590 million in Citibank. He went on to invest in many publicly traded US companies, including News Corp., Disney and Apple. He often invests personally alongside his publicly traded conglomerate, Kingdom Holding.
Alwaleed has accumulated an empire of luxury hotel properties. Today, he owns stakes in London's Savoy Hotel, the George V hotel in Paris and the Four Seasons hotel group. Famous for his eccentric, high-cost lifestyle, Alwaleed owns a yacht and multiple homes, including a 420-room, 370,000-square-foot palace in Riyadh.
On Nov. 4, 2017, Alwaleed was targeted in an anti-corruption crackdown spearheaded by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. He was detained alongside dozens of other Saudi businessmen at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Riyadh. After his release in January 2018, Alwaleed described his detention as a "misunderstanding" between him and the government and maintained his innocence of any charges. Saudi Arabia's attorney general has said the kingdom has collected more than $100 billion in cash and other assets from detainees.