Ever heard of royalties? Businesses use them, especially on new to market technologies, because there is no existing or established business model to generate a value from. Royalty based licensing agreements are a win-win for both parties in such a case. Neither party is grossly mis-compensated, both are compensated based on actual outcomes. Typically, there is an up front licensing fee with the amount determined by things such as exclusivity, whether or not best efforts or reasonable efforts are in the contract, etc.
IMO, I doubt very seriously that NEOM received an amount of any magnitude for a licensing fee. My bet is that they are partnering with the agency with a revenue split of some kind. It protects the agency if things don't go well, and it protects NEOM if things go better than expected.
There's really nothing to provide Brew that will answer the question, except for the actual agreement. Either one of us stating our opinions is just that, conjecture on our part based upon nothing but our experiences. They didn't state what kind of agreement they made in detail, so we won't know until we know.
News 
Market Data 
Discover 
AI
