President Trump’s Saudi trip turns into an AI lovefest

For years, the U.S.-Saudi Arabia relationship revolved around oil and defense. But the state visit by President Donald Trump to Riyadh strongly signals a pivot to technology, as the regions find common ground not in petroleum, but in rich wells of investment capital. The visit included an aerial escort by Saudi F-16 planes and a ceremony in the opulent Saudi Royal Court. And it was attended by a who’s-who of AI’s high priests, including Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Tesla CEO and “first buddy” Elon Musk, as well as leaders of Amazon, Google, Uber, Palantir, and others. This tech-forward delegation represents a fundamental evolution in the ties between Washington and the region, according to Mohammed Soliman, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute. ”As AI rockets to the top of the Trump priority list, the technology is also gathering a new reputation: from a possible threat to a giant lever for generating deals. The White House announced a landmark commitment from Riyadh to invest $600 billion in the U.S., including $20 billion in American data centers by the Saudi company DataVolt and a commitment by DataVolt and Google, Oracle, Salesforce, AMD and Uber to invest $80 billion together in tech in the U.S. and the Kingdom."