Trump to address Saudi FII Summit next week in Miami
Saudi Arabia has lined up U.S. President Donald Trump to headline its annual FII Priority Summit in Miami, Fla., next week.
The kingdom’s Future Investment Initiative Institute announced on Wednesday that Trump will speak at the conference’s opening session Feb. 19 at the Faena Hotel in Miami Beach.
Among those also scheduled to participate in the three-day event are SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son, BlackRock’s Robert S. Kapito, Oracle’s Safra Catz, Point72’s Steven Cohen and Bridgewater’s Nir Bar Dea. Saudi Public Investment Fund Governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan is the conference’s host.
The Miami conference will take place in the wake of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s pledge last month to invest at least $600 billion in the U.S. over the next four years. Trump responded with thanks while suggesting that the kingdom raise its investment to $1 trillion.
Florida is a center of Trump family activities, with the Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach serving as the President’s home between terms in the White House. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner lives with his wife Ivanka Trump and three children on Miami’s exclusive Indian Creek Island. Kushner’s $4.6 billion private equity fund Affinity Partners, which is backed by sovereign wealth funds in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar, is based in Miami.
Trump’s appearance at the conference also comes amid tension between the two countries after the President proposed that the U.S. take possession of the Gaza Strip. The plan would move some 1.8 million Palestinian residents out of the war-ravaged territory while building resort hotels that would turn Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle East.”
Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, the Palestinian Authority and other Arab countries have condemned the Trump plan, saying any Gaza reconstruction effort must not force residents to leave.
Miami’s FII summit debates risks amid investor zeal for AI tech
In a week that saw Nvidia’s shares rise to dizzying heights, pumping up stock markets around the world, it didn’t take long for the subject of artificial intelligence to anchor itself in the center of debate at Saudi Arabia’s Miami investor conference.
Yasir Al-Rumayyan, Governor of the Public Investment Fund, which sponsored the Future Investment Initiative’s two-day Priority Summit, tackled the subject in Thursday’s lead-off session, pitching the kingdom as a natural hub for developing AI technology.It took 14 minutes into the opening of Saudi Arabia’s Miami Beach investor conference for the enthusiasm around artificial intelligence to anchor itself at the center of debate.
Al-Rumayyan also said that in 2025, the PIF plans to start increasing its annual investments by as much as 75% to about $70 billion. The Riyadh-based sovereign wealth fund currently has more than $700 billion under management and projects growing to between $2 trillion and $3 trillion by 2030.
“AI would consume a lot of energy, and we are the global leader when it comes to fossil fuel energy and when it comes to renewable energy,” said Al-Rumayyan, who is also Chairman of Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil company. “So I think we are very well positioned to be an AI hub.” He noted that the kingdom has the “political will” and wealth to build the energy-intensive data centers critical to expanding use of AI. (Click here for the live feed.)
The question of how to manage the dizzying growth of AI technologies was a natural for participants in the conference, a spin-off of the FII’s central annual event in Riyadh known as “Davos in the Desert,” which attracts some of the world’s most prominent investors. Many were avidly tracking Nvidia on their mobile phones after the Silicon Valley semiconductor giant’s shares surged more than 16% following a glowing earnings forecast for its AI chips.
Blackstone Group CEO Steve Schwarzman, who followed Al-Rumayyan to the stage, flagged the risks presented to society, the economy and the labor market by AI.
“The people that I know who are on the cutting edge… are really cautious about this technology,” he said in the conference’s first panel discussion at Miami’s Faena Hotel & Forum.
“In other words, they love it. It can do marvelous things. But unlike most of the business community, they are not against regulation. In fact, they’re pretty enthusiastic about regulation, because they see the downside. And they want those downsides to be addressed,” Schwarzman said.
Jenny Johnson, CEO of Franklin Templeton, an investment firm with $1.5 trillion in assets under management, reminded Schwarzman that AI’s downsides have been clear to Hollywood fans of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s avenging cyborg for decades.
“If you watch the movie “The Terminator,” it kind of scares you, but on the other hand, if we don’t create environments where the good folks are learning how to use AI, the bad guys become the experts on it,” Johnson said. “And so you have to… allow for innovation to happen.”
Scheduled for Friday at the Miami summit were Palantir CEO Alex Karp, Carlyle’s David Rubenstein, 26North’s Josh Harris, General Atlantic’s Anton Levy, J. Paul Getty Trust’s Katherine Fleming and Imagine Entertainment’s Brian Grazer. A talk by actress and Goop wellness guru Gwyneth Paltrow closes the conference.
Saudi Arabia’s Future Investment Initiative lands in Miami
Saudi Arabia’s Future Investment Initiative gabfest is taking the show on the road— landing in Miami tomorrow for the second annual edition of its Priority Summit.
The two-day agenda at the Faena Forum is expected to see about 800 executives, investors and policymakers meet around the theme “on the edge of a new frontier,” with a focus on investment opportunities and disruptive technologies.
“The world feels like an increasingly troubled place,with violent conflicts, cost of living crises, climate change, AI uncertainties, pandemic threats and other big problems,” Richard Attias, CEO of the FII Institute, told Arab News. “And so, it has never been more important to convene leaders from investment, business and government to address the root causes and come up with practical answers.”
The FII is a non-profit run by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. Other editions of FII’s Priority Summits have taken place in Hong Kong, London and New York. The events serve as a tee-up for the big “Davos in the Desert” conference, taking place each November at the Ritz Carlton in Riyadh.
Speakers include Stephen Schwarzman of Blackstone, Jenny Johnson of Franklin Templeton, Mary Callahan Erdoes of JP Morgan, David Rubenstein of Carlyle, Dina Powell McCormick of BDT & MSD Partners and Dell Technologies founder Michael Dell. Others exploring global economic trends, financial markets, and policy dynamics include Yasir Al-Rumayyan, Governor of the PIF and the Chairman of the FII Institute; Princess Reema bint Bandar Al-Saud, Saudi Arabia’s Ambassador to the U.S.; and Khalid A. Al-Falih, the Saudi Minister of Investment.
