RIYADH – Saudi Arabian billionaire Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal on Tuesdayannounced that he has taken 2.3% stake in Snap, the parent company ofSnapChat, for a whopping $250 million.

The prince has not bought all the shares in one go, rather it was a slowand steady process which completed in May 2018. Prince Alwaleed revealedthe announcement on the day Snap announced its second-quarter results.

While announcing the investment, the Saudi prince stated,

“Snapchat is one of the most innovative social media platforms in the worldand we believe it has only just begun to scratch the surface of its truepotential and we are blessed to be part of it.”

This is not the first technology investment of the prince, who is themember of Saudi Arabia Royal Family, he has previously invested intechnology giants like Lyft and Twitter as well.

Snap just announced its second-quarter results. Although the revenuesoared, it lost its 3M active users. Snap is facing increasingly toughcompetition from Facebook and its owned social networking applications.Every innovation at Snap is copied instantly on Instagram, Facebook, andWhatsApp making it difficult for SnapChat to keep the users glued to itsservice.

Snap declined to comment on the Saudi Prince investment. According topictures available on the internet, Evan Spiegel did meet Talal back in2015. It can be assumed that the discussion started back then.

Snapchat is very popular in Saudi Arabia.The country almost has 9 millionactive users of the application, women constitute more than 50% of thatpopulation.

Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal’s current net worth is almost $18.1 billion.