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Donald Trump hailed the US’s relationship with Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, simply hours after the White Home unveiled what it mentioned was $600bn price of defence and synthetic intelligence offers with the dominion.
The US president 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 unbelievable man, I’ve recognized him a very long time now. There’s no one like him,” Trump mentioned to a packed auditorium in Riyadh. Among the many friends have been Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, non-public 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 following steps to make our relationship nearer, stronger, extra highly effective than ever earlier than . . . And it’ll stay that manner.”
In a press launch earlier than Trump’s speech, the White Home had hailed “Saudi Arabia’s $600bn dedication to put money into the US” and “financial ties that can endure for generations to return”.
Prince Mohammed mentioned the 2 international locations would work over the approaching months to extend the whole to $1tn.
The offers unveiled by the White Home 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 following 5 years.
That may make it one of many largest AI chip orders by a state firm, underlining the dimensions of Prince Mohammed’s ambitions to place Saudi Arabia as a worldwide AI hub and boosting Nvidia’s want to construct “sovereign AI” infrastructure world wide.
The primary section of Humain’s funding will contain deploying 18,000 of Nvidia’s newest “Blackwell” servers, the chipmaker mentioned. Based mostly on the value of a single Nvidia graphics processing unit, estimated at $30,000-$40,000, the Saudi funding would run into a number of billions of {dollars}.
AMD, one among Nvidia’s major opponents within the AI chip market, can be co-investing as much as $10bn with Humain to deploy its personal infrastructure within the nation. Amazon made an identical $5bn dedication overlaying information centre infrastructure.
Nvidia shares have been up greater than 5 per cent on Tuesday, whereas AMD’s rose 3.7 per cent. Amazon gained nearly 2 per cent.
The White Home additionally cited on Tuesday what it mentioned was a “almost $142bn” settlement to supply Riyadh “with state-of-the-art warfighting gear and companies from over a dozen US defence corporations”.
It added this would come with air power and house capabilities, missile defence, maritime and border safety, land forces modernisation and upgrades to communication methods.
The US additionally referred to plans by Saudi Arabian DataVolt to take a position $20bn in AI information centres and vitality infrastructure within the US.
Trump is trying to safe offers and funding pledges price greater than $1tn on his journey to the Gulf, which can even embrace stops in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
The standard US allies are among the many largest consumers of American weapons, boast sovereign wealth funds that collectively handle in extra of $3tn and have all acknowledged their ambitions to take a position closely in AI.
Lots of the US’s strongest tech executives have been additionally in Riyadh, together with Musk, Huang and OpenAI’s Sam Altman as Saudi Arabia hosted a glitzy funding discussion board. High financiers together with Blackstone’s Schwarzman, BlackRock’s Larry Fink and Citigroup’s Jane Fraser additionally attended.
US tech corporations have been more and more trying to the Gulf, which manages among the world’s largest and most energetic sovereign wealth funds, to lift capital and lure investments.
The Trump administration final week scrapped a Biden-era rule underneath which Saudi Arabia, together with dozens of different international locations together with India and Singapore, would have confronted limitations on their purchases of essentially the most highly effective US-designed AI chips.
Riyadh launched Humain, which can 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.
Simply days after Trump’s inauguration in January, Prince Mohammed dedicated Saudi Arabia to investing $600bn within the US over the following 4 years — the identical quantity that was introduced on Tuesday.
Extra reporting by Michael Acton in San Francisco