Saudi Arabia calls for closer cooperation on critical minerals
Saudi Arabia is using Davos this week to call for closer global cooperation on mining and critical minerals amid growing tensions over competition for resources as Donald Trump stirs the pot.
As the U.S. President left Washington to address the World Economic Forum, Saudi Minister of Mining and Mineral Resources Bandar Alkhorayef warned on Monday that countries risk conflict if they try to squeeze out competitors.
“We cannot afford a world where every country tries to secure critical minerals on its own,” Alkhorayef told a Davos panel, urging shared frameworks and cross-border partnerships.
Trump is scheduled to address the WEF today in the conference’s most anticipated event as he confronts European allies over his plans to take over Greenland from Denmark, in part because of its underground stores of rare earths such as graphite, copper, zinc and titanium.
Saudi Arabia has been positioning itself as a hub for mineral processing and investment, with Alkhorayef framing cooperation as essential to stabilizing supply chains and easing geopolitical strain. The kingdom, which is trying to diversify its economy away from reliance on oil, has an estimated $2.5 trillion in mineral wealth.
“We realized that unlocking the value that we have in our natural resources, of the different minerals that we have, will definitely help our economy to grow, to diversify,” Alkhorayef said.
Gulf CEOs circulate in Davos as AI investments take center stage
Davos is once again pulling the Gulf’s top business leaders to Switzerland’s snow-capped ski resort, where executives from the Middle East are mingling at the World Economic Forum with the likes of Bridgewater’s Ray Dalio, BlackRock’s Larry Fink and Palantir’s Alex Karp.
From Saudi Arabia, the delegation includes Talal Al Maiman, CEO of Kingdom Holding, Tareq Al Sadhan, CEO of Saudi National Bank, Abdullah Aladel, managing director and CEO of Alkhair Capital, Marco Arcelli, CEO of ACWA Power, and Jerry Inzerillo, CEO of Diriyah Co.
The UAE sent Mubadala CEO Khaldoon Al Mubarak and Dr. Sultan Al Jaber, CEO of ADNOC and Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology, alongside private-sector leaders such as Peng Xiao, CEO of G42, and Badr Jafar, CEO of Crescent Enterprises.
Qatar is represented by Mansoor Al-Mahmoud, CEO of the Qatar Investment Authority, and Saad Al-Kaabi, president and CEO of QatarEnergy. Bahrain’s delegation includes Abdulla Al Khalifa, CEO of Mumtalakat, the kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund, and Hisham Alrayes, CEO of GFH Financial Group.
Several execs are making the rounds at the TV networks that give Davos wall-to-wall coverage. Al Mubarak, for one, annually uses the Swiss conference as a pulpit to raise Mubadala’s international visibility.
“Leaving the noise and the hype aside, I think we have a very clear view of what we think are the investable spaces,” Al Mubarak said in an interview with Bloomberg. “Particularly when it comes to AI enablement, there are a lot of aspects that I think we believe in.”
