Why is the CEO of Snapchat meeting with a Saudi prince?

Not every tech company can say that its received funding from a royal family but, if news that CEO Evan Spiegel met with Saudi Arabian Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal earlier this month is any indication, Snapchat may soon be one of the few major tech companies to be able to boast that. One of the things discussed at this meeting was a potential business partnership between the company and Prince Alwaleed’s own Kingdom Holding.

Senior management of Snapchat held talks with Saudi Arabia’s Prince Alwaleed bin Talal on potential cooperation, the prince’s investment company said in a statement on Sunday. The meeting, which included the mobile messaging company’s Chief Executive Evan Spiegel and Chief Strategy Officer Imran Khan, comes as Snapchat embarks on a new funding round that values the business at up to $19 billion. “On the agenda of discussions was future potential business cooperation between Kingdom Holding and Snapchat in the technology field,” Kingdom Holding, which is 95 percent owned by Prince Alwaleed, said in a statement without elaborating. The billionaire prince has made a number of investments in technology brands in the past, including social messaging service Twitter and Chinese e-commerce company JD.com Inc.