Donald Trump hailed the US’s relationship with Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, simply hours after the White Home unveiled $600bn price of defence and synthetic intelligence offers with the dominion.
The US president on Tuesday lauded the dominion and its de facto chief, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, as he started the primary leg of his dealmaking, three-nation tour of the oil-rich Gulf.
“He’s an unimaginable man, I’ve recognized him a very long time now. There’s no person like him,” Trump mentioned to a packed auditorium in Riyadh. Among the many company have been Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, personal fairness baron Steve Schwarzman, Nvidia boss Jensen Huang and dozens of different US executives.
The US-Saudi relationship had been a “bedrock” of safety and prosperity, he mentioned. Trump added, “At the moment we reaffirm the bond and take the subsequent steps to make our relationship, nearer stronger extra highly effective than ever earlier than . . . And it’ll stay that manner.”
The White Home in a press launch earlier than Trump’s speech hailed “Saudi Arabia’s $600bn dedication to spend money on the US” and “financial ties that may endure for generations to come back”.
The offers unveiled on Tuesday included a dedication by Saudi Arabia’s new state-owned AI firm, Humain, to construct AI infrastructure within the kingdom utilizing a number of “hundred 1000’s” of Nvidia’s most superior chips over the subsequent 5 years.
That may make it one of many greatest AI chip orders by a state firm, underlining the size of Prince Mohammed’s ambitions to place Saudi Arabia as a world AI hub and boosting Nvidia’s want to construct “sovereign AI” infrastructure around the globe.
The primary part of Humain’s funding will contain deploying 18,000 of Nvidia’s newest “Blackwell” servers, the chipmaker mentioned. Primarily based on the worth of a single Nvidia graphics processing unit, estimated to be between $30,000 and $40,000, the Saudi funding would run into a number of billions of {dollars}.
Nvidia shares have been up greater than 5 per cent on Tuesday.
The White Home additionally on Tuesday cited what it mentioned was a “almost $142bn” settlement to supply Riyadh “with state-of-the-art warfighting tools and providers from over a dozen us defence corporations”.
It added this would come with air drive and area capabilities, missile defence, maritime and border safety, land forces modernisation and communication programs upgrades.
The US additionally referred to plans by Saudi Arabian DataVolt to speculate $20bn in AI knowledge centres and vitality infrastructure within the US.
But it surely didn’t instantly give a timeframe for the offers, which additionally embrace contracts for US teams to construct infrastructure initiatives within the kingdom.
Trump is seeking to safe offers and funding pledges price greater than $1tn on his journey to the Gulf, which may even embrace stops in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
The normal US allies, are among the many greatest consumers of American weapons, boast sovereign wealth funds that collectively handle in extra of $3tn and have all acknowledged their ambitions to speculate closely in AI.
Lots of the US’s strongest tech executives have been additionally in Riyadh, together with Elon Musk, OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Nvidia’s chief govt Jensen Huang as Saudi Arabia hosted a glitzy funding discussion board. Prime financiers together with BlackRock’s Larry Fink, Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman and Citigroup’s Jane Fraser additionally attended.
US tech firms have been more and more seeking to the Gulf, which manages among the world’s largest and most lively sovereign wealth funds, to lift capital and lure investments.
The Gulf states, in the meantime, view AI as a vital a part of their plans to diversify their economies away from oil and develop new industries, hoping to leverage their plentiful vitality assets and the monetary muscle of their sovereign funds.
It comes because the Trump administration final week scrapped a Biden-era rule that might have seen Saudi Arabia, together with dozens of different nations together with India and Singapore, face limitations on their purchases of probably the most highly effective US-designed AI chips.
Riyadh launched Humain, which will likely be chaired by Prince Mohammed and owned by the Public Funding Fund, the $940bn sovereign wealth fund, to steer its technique and investments within the sector on Monday, the day earlier than Trump arrived.
Prince Mohammed has maintained good relations with Trump, and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, because the president’s first time period. Simply days after Trump’s inauguration in January, he dedicated Saudi Arabia to speculate $600bn within the US over the subsequent 4 years — the identical quantity that was introduced on Tuesday.
The UAE adopted up with an analogous gesture, pledging in March to speculate $1.4tn over the subsequent 10 years. It’s also in search of to ascertain itself as a number one AI hub and has taken a strategic choice to spend money on US tech.
Analysts query how the Gulf states will have the ability to deploy such an enormous scale of capital within the timeframes introduced, notably Saudi Arabia because it grapples with decrease oil costs, a widening price range deficit and the huge scale of its personal home initiatives.
Trump will fly to Qatar on Wednesday, with Doha anticipated to make its personal pledge to speculate lots of of billions of {dollars} within the US.
However the president’s journey has been overshadowed by an issue triggered by his choice to simply accept a $400mn jumbo jet from Qatar to briefly change Air Drive One.
The Qatari present is more likely to be the most important by a international state or entity to a US president in latest historical past and has drawn criticism from Trump’s supporters in addition to opponents.
Trump’s journey to the area comes at a time when the Center East continues to be enduring the repercussions of the 19-months of battle triggered within the wake of Hamas’s October 7 2023 assault and Israel’s retaliatory offensive in Gaza.
There has to this point been little public point out of the area’s crises as Trump has centered on funding offers.
Extra reporting by Michael Acton in San Francisco
