What is Aramco, the sponsor of Rossi that beats giants like Apple or Amazon?

July 4, 2021

Last April, the arrival of the VR46 team in MotoGP in 2022 was announced. The formation lands with the support of Saudi Aramco, a company that is already very involved in other motor sports such as Formula 1 and the Dakar.

Aramco became the first global partner Formula 1 has brought on board since Liberty Media took over the management of the championship in early 2017.

Saudi Arabia’s flagship and engine of its economy, Aramco (whose owner is Prince Abdulaziz bin Abdullah Al Saud) currently closes the top 5 of the Forbes Global 2000 list , an annual ranking drawn up by the prestigious magazine with the 2,000 private companies in the world with the best combination of sales , earnings , assets , and market value, and is the only one outside the United States and China in the top 10. The next energy company on the list is Sinopec (48).

The company has been climbing positions in this ranking year after year until leaving behind some well-known companies such as Apple (6), Amazon (10), Samsung (11) or Microsoft (15). In fact, in 2019 it was rated the most profitable company in the world by FitchRatings . In December of that same year it went public.

The current market value of Saudi Aramco is 1,897.2 billion dollars –only behind Apple and Microsoft in the top 100 of the list–, with profits of 510.3 billion dollars.

2021 Forbes Global 2000 Top 10 ($ Billions)

	Business	Sales	Profits	Active	Market value
1	ICBC	190.5	45.8	4,914.7	249.5
2	JPMorgan Chase	136.2	40.4	3,689.3	464.8
3	Berkshire Hathaway	245.5	42.5	873.7	624.4
4	China Construction Bank	173.5	39.3	4,301.7	210.4
5	Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Saudi Aramco)	$229.7	49.3	510.3	1,897.2
6	Apple	294	63.9	354.1	2,252.3
6	Bank of America	98.8	17.9	2,832.2	336.3
6	Ping An Insurance Group	169.1	20.8	1,453.8	211.2
9	Agricultural Bank of China	153.9	31.3	4,159.9	140.1
10	Amazon	386.1	21.3	321.2	1,711.8

^{*Forbes source}

Saudi Aramco was born in 1933 when a concession contract was signed between Saudi Arabia and Standard Oil Company of California (SOCAL). After surveying the country’s desert for oil, drilling began in 1935 and commercial production began three years later. The Saudi Arabian government took full control of the company in 1980 .

A leader in energy and chemicals, Saudi Aramco is the world’s largest integrated oil and gas company. Its headquarters is located in the city of Dhahran , it operates worldwide and has more than 70,000 employees. It is also the key to the Vision 2030 plan with which the Saudi country wants to diversify its economy from its dependence on oil.

The structure owned by Valentino Rossi will land in MotoGP with the backing of a giant for the next five years. At the moment, for 2022 it is only known that one of the two Ducati they will have will be for Luca Marini. For the second, the favorite is Marco Bezzecchi, but Prince Abdulaziz bin Abdullah Al Saud wants #46 over the other.