I noticed something interesting about Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal of Saudi Arabia who has returned to the Forbes billionaire list in 2025. With a net worth of $16.5 billion, he has become the wealthiest man in the Arab world and ranks 128th globally. But what really catches the eye is not just the figure, but how this Saudi prince strategically distributes his wealth.

Born in 1955, Alwaleed is the grandson of Saudi Arabia's founder, King Abdulaziz Al Saud. He was on the Forbes list in 2017 with $18.7 billion, then disappeared when Forbes stopped counting Saudi billionaires from 2018. Now he is the only one among the wealthy Saudis from back then to return, and coincidentally, he is first among the 15 Saudi billionaires in 2025.

The main source of his wealth is Kingdom Holding Company, which he founded 45 years ago and where he owns 78.13%. This stake is worth about $6.4 billion. But the real masterpiece is how he structured the holding company's $19 billion portfolio.

In tech, Kingdom Holding is the second-largest shareholder of X (ex Twitter) and Elon Musk's xAI. Last year, he increased his investment in xAI to $800 million through funding rounds. Alwaleed believed in the Twitter deal in 2022 and continued to bet when Musk announced the merger of X and xAI in March 2024, with a valuation of $125 billion. He expects his investment in this joint venture to reach between $4 and $5 billion in the coming years. He also has holdings in Meta, Uber, Didi, and Lyft.

In the hotel sector—almost 31% of the portfolio—he owns 23.7% of Four Seasons through a partnership with Bill Gates' fund. In 2021, he sold half of his stake to Gates for $2.21 billion. He also owns 6.8% of Accor, the French group that controls brands like Fairmont and Raffles.

Real estate accounts for 25.9%, with projects like the Kingdom Centre in Riyadh and Jeddah Tower, which is planned to exceed 1,000 meters. In the financial sector, his historic investment in Citigroup from 1991—$800 million—reached $10 billion in 2005. Currently, Kingdom Holding owns 1.06% of Citigroup and is the largest shareholder of Banque Saudi Fransi with 16.2%, worth about $1.8 billion.

In aviation, the group controls 37.2% of Flynas, a low-cost airline with 61 aircraft that will go public on Tadawul this year, aiming to raise at least $2 billion. In healthcare, he owns 4.9% of Dallah Health and manages Kingdom Hospital. In education, he holds 89.8% of the Kingdom School System, which saw a 14% increase in enrollment last year.

This is the strategy of a true investor: massive diversification across 18 smaller sectors, from finance to artificial intelligence, energy to healthcare. It’s not just wealth accumulation; it’s building an ecosystem of assets. That’s why the Saudi prince remains one of the most interesting names when it comes to long-term multi-sector investment strategies.