Newsroom
The United States and Saudi Arabia just inked more than $270 billion in business deals, marking one of the biggest investment pushes between the two countries in years, all during Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s first visit to Washington since 2018.
At the US–Saudi Business Forum, Saudi tech firm Humain stole the spotlight with a massive agreement to buy 600,000 Nvidia microchips, plus a deal with Elon Musk’s xAI and Nvidia boss Jensen Huang to build a major data center and a 500-megawatt manufacturing facility on Saudi soil.
Saudi oil giant Aramco added fuel to the fire, signing 17 memorandums of understanding with US companies worth an estimated $30 billion. Meanwhile, MP Materials, America’s only major rare-earth producer outside China, agreed to set up a rare-earth processing plant in the kingdom. The US Defense Department also struck a deal with Saudi miner Maaden to expand the processing of strategic metals in the Middle East, a major geopolitical move given global supply chain tensions.
The forum drew a who’s who of American corporate power: the CEOs of Chevron, Qualcomm, Cisco, General Dynamics, Pfizer and senior executives from Google, IBM, Boeing, Adobe, Salesforce and top VC firm Andreessen Horowitz.
Musk and Huang took the stage together, predicting that artificial intelligence will upend the workforce, with Musk going as far as saying work could become “optional” within the next two decades.
The crown prince then dropped his own headline: a $1 trillion Saudi investment pledge in the United States, doubling down on a promise he made earlier this year. Trump, sitting beside him, pushed for $1.5 trillion, in typical Trump fashion.
Whether the full trillion materializes is another story. Analysts warn the prince is already spending eye-watering amounts on Saudi Arabia’s futuristic megacity projects and preparations for the 2034 World Cup. Still, the kingdom’s cheap energy and open land make it prime real estate for AI infrastructure, and American companies clearly want in.
The trip also carried political weight: it was the crown prince’s first time in Washington since the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. But if the warm reception at the forum is any indication, US business leaders have moved on, and are laser-focused on the money.
