1. The meeting
- President Trump and Crown Prince MBS hosted a new U.S.–Saudi investment summit in Riyadh.
- A‑list tech CEOs flew in to court Saudi money for huge AI builds.
2. Who showed up & why
Elon Musk — Tesla / SpaceX / xAI
- Why he flew: needs sovereign‑level funding for Starlink expansion and xAI training clusters.
- Saudi angle: PIF already helps bankroll Musk ventures; Riyadh hinted at fresh Starlink service deals and possible satellite launch contracts.
Sam Altman — OpenAI
- Why he flew: raising ≈$100 billion for “Stargate” super‑data‑centres.
- Saudi angle: Humain wants Arabic LLMs and will pay for compute—perfect customer for OpenAI’s future capacity.
Jensen Huang — Nvidia
- Why he flew: close the sale of hundreds of thousands of Blackwell GPUs.
- Saudi angle: first batch of 18 000 chips ships to Humain this year, anchoring a $600 billion U.S.–Saudi deal package.
Andy Jassy — Amazon
- Why he flew: secure long‑term AWS cloud contracts and land permissions for a new Saudi region.
- Saudi angle: Saudi agencies will migrate workloads to AWS; Riyadh gets modern infra and job creation.
Lisa Su — AMD
- Why she flew: promote AMD’s MI300X chips as Nvidia alternatives.
- Saudi angle: signed a $10 billion JV with Humain to build 500 MW of AI compute across the U.S. and Gulf.
Ben Horowitz — Andreessen Horowitz
- Why he flew: pitch a planned $20 billion AI mega‑fund and recruit Gulf limited partners.
- Saudi angle: PIF sees the fund as a shortcut to big U.S. AI stakes; Horowitz gets deep‑pocketed LPs.
Alex Karp — Palantir
- Why he flew: sell battlefield analytics to the Gulf and attach Palantir to a $142 billion defence‑sales package.
- Saudi angle: Riyadh modernises defence without relying solely on traditional contractors; Karp locks in recurring government revenue.
Travis Kalanick — CloudKitchens
- Why he flew: court follow‑on capital for his ghost‑kitchen empire and explore a Middle‑East IPO spinoff.
- Saudi angle: PIF already put $400 million into CloudKitchens in 2019 and could double down to build regional kitchen hubs.
3. The deals announced
- Nvidia to ship hundreds of thousands of Blackwell GPUs to new Saudi AI firm Humain.
- AMD + Humain plan to spend $10 B on data centers across the U.S. and Gulf.
- AWS confirms large Saudi cloud region coming online in 2026.
4. Why Saudi is paying
- Vision 2030 aims to diversify away from oil.
- Owning AI infra (chips, clouds) puts the kingdom on the tech map.
- Big checks buy instant partnerships with U.S. giants.
5. Critics say
- Risk of U.S. dependence on an autocracy for core tech parts.
- Possible conflicts: Trump family business ties and defense contracts overlap.
- Khashoggi killing still stings; some CEOs (Cook, Pichai, Bezos) skipped the trip.
6. Bottom line
Saudi cash fuels the AI arms race, and America’s tech titans are happy to board that rocket - even if the optics are messy.
