UAE welcomes Trump amid anticipation of AI chip deals with U.S.

In the final leg of his tour through the Gulf’s royal palaces, U.S. President Donald Trump landed in Abu Dhabi on Thursday as G42 and other UAE tech firms awaited a green light for billions of dollars in advanced chip deals.

UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed greeted the U.S. leader at Abu Dhabi’s exclusive Presidential Terminal after a brief flight on Air Force One from neighboring Qatar. Also on hand to welcome Trump were the President’s brothers, Vice President and National Security Adviser Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed, who is Chairman of G42, and Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed.

Earlier in the day, Qatar hosted a business conference with Trump in the capital city of Doha and the president talked talked to U.S. soldiers at the Al Udeid U.S. Air Base, which has been an anchor for America’s security alliance in the Gulf.

The U.S. leader woke up in Doha after Emir Sheikh Tamim hosted a lavish state dinner at Lusail Palace on Wednesday night. On Trump’s arrival in Qatar, his motorcade passed sword dancers, parading camels and a royal honor guard mounted on Arabian stallions.

Today’s visit to the UAE is the last stop in his regional tour, which started on Tuesday when he landed in Riyadh and wraps up with Friday’s return to Washington.

Trump and close adviser Elon Musk spent two days in Saudi Arabia, hosted by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and holding chats with corporate leaders from such powerhouses as Aramco, the Public Investment Fund, Nvidia, OpenAI, BlackRock and Citigroup.

In Abu Dhabi, where main roads are decked out with neon signs welcoming Trump, the president was expected to announce a preliminary agreement to let the UAE import 500,000 of Nvidia’s most advanced AI chips per year, starting in 2025, boosting the Emirates’ construction of data centers required for the highest level of AI development, Reuters reports.

Twenty percent of the chips will be allocated to UAE tech firm G42, and the remainder will be allocated to U.S. companies like Microsoft and Oracle that are building data centers in the UAE. The deal could potentially extend through 2027 or even 2030, according to the news agency.

The White House said Trump secured deals totaling more than $243 billion with Qatar after leaders from the Gulf peninsula state pledged some $1.2 trillion in American investment. The UAE has committed to investing $1.4 trillion in the U.S. over the next 10 years, while Saudi Arabia said it hopes to reach $1 trillion during Trump’s four-year term.

Among the largest deals was Qatar’s $96 billion plan to acquire as many as 210 Boeing 787 Dreamliner and 777X aircraft. The U.S. and Qatari governments also signed off on a $1 billion agreement for Raytheon to provide counter-drone capabilities to Qatar. General Atomics also secured a nearly $2 billion agreement for Qatar to acquire MQ-9B drones.

Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman, meanwhile, defended his country’s offer to Trump of a luxury jet to replace the 40-year-old Air Force One, telling CNN it was not an influence-buying effort.

“It is government to government. The transaction has nothing to do with personnel, whether it’s on the U.S. side or on the Qatari side,” he said, adding that Qatar is ready to withdraw the plan if it’s found to be illegal.

Trump moves on to Qatar after bounty of deals in Saudi Arabia

U.S. President Donald Trump took his Middle East dealmaking tour to Qatar today after a summit meeting in Riyadh with leaders of the six Gulf states that focused in part on promoting more investment in American military hardware and artificial intelligence.

The visit to Qatar’s capital of Doha continued to generate criticism from Democrats in Congress over Trump’s intention to accept a gift from the Qatari government of a refurbished $400 million plane that would temporarily replace Air Force One.

Arriving in the early afternoon after a short flight from Saudi Arabia, Trump landed at Hamad International Airport in Doha and was met by Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim, who was waiting on a yellow carpet to symbolize the desert peninsula’s sandy terrain.

Tomorrow, the President will meet Qatari business leaders for breakfast and greet U.S. soldiers at the Al Udeid U.S. Air Base, before taking off for the UAE.

In his two-day visit to Riyadh, Trump lavished attention on Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who said he would try to meet the President’s challenge for investing $1 trillion in the U.S. over the next four years.

At a Saudi-U.S. business conference in Riyadh, Trump and MBS held court with a constellation of billionaires, including Tesla’s Elon Musk, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, BlackRock’s Larry Fink, Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman and Bridgewater’s Ray Dalio.

From the Saudi business world, the conference featured Muhammad Al Jasser, Chairman of Islamic Development Bank; Nabeel Koshak, CEO of Saudi Venture Capital; Marc Winterhoff, Interim CEO of Lucid; John Pagano, Group CEO of Red Sea Global; Mohammad Abunayyan, Chairman of ACWA Power; Tony Douglas, CEO of Riyadh Air; and Jerry Inzerillo, Group CEO of Diriyah Co.

The Saudi Crown Prince wrapped up the day by bringing Trump for a tour of Diriyah, the ancestral home of the Al Saud royal family, which was led by Inzerillo. The site is undergoing a massive renovation as one of the multibillion megaprojects undertaken by the kingdom, along with the 100-mile long Neom city on the kingdom’s west coast and the Al Mukkab skyscraper cube in Riyadh.

Among the biggest issues discussed in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday was the extent to which the Trump administration would lift sanctions on AI semiconductor chips that are being eagerly sought by the Gulf states.

Nvidia, the world’s biggest semiconductor maker, agreed to supply its most advanced AI chips to Saudi Arabia’s Humain, a company created to push that country’s AI infrastructure efforts, Bloomberg reports. Humain will get “several hundred thousand” of Nvidia’s most advanced processors over the next five years, starting with 18,000 of its cutting-edge GB300 Grace Blackwell products and its InfiniBand networking technology.

Huang saw his personal net worth surge to approximately $120 billion over the day, up from $80 billion a year ago, driven by soaring demand for the company’s AI chips that has fueled a sharp rise in its stock, Reuters reports.

AMD, Nvidia’s nearest rival in AI accelerators, will provide chips and software for data centers “stretching from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to the United States” in a $10 billion project, Humain and AMD said.

Also, Saudi VC firm STV launched a $100 million AI fund backed by Google to invest in MENA startups, as part of a broader set of tech-focused U.S.-Saudi agreements announced during President Trump’s visit to Riyadh, Bloomberg reports. And Saudi Arabia agreed to authorize the use of Musk’s Starlink service for aviation and maritime shipping, the SpaceX founder announced.

MBS tells Trump in Riyadh he’ll try to invest $1 trillion in U.S.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told President Donald Trump and a solid portion of the world’s business elite on Tuesday that he hopes to fulfill his pledge to invest $600 billion in the U.S. and might even hit the $1 trillion mark sought by the White House.

In turn, Trump praised MBS as a visionary leader and hailed the U.S.-Saudi alliance as a profitable enterprise for both sides as the two spoke at a business conference in Riyadh and the president kicked off a four-day swing through the Gulf that will also take him to Qatar and the UAE.

“Today we hope for investment opportunities worth $600 billion, including deals worth $300 billion that were signed during this forum,” the Saudi leader said in a speech at the capital city’s King Abdulaziz International Conference Center. “We will work in the coming months on the second phase to complete deals and raise it to $1 trillion,” he said.

A good chunk of that commitment will come from an agreement to sell Saudi Arabia an arms package worth nearly $142 billion, which the White House called “the largest defense cooperation agreement” that the U.S. has ever signed.

Trump beamed as he followed MBS onstage to address an audience that included Tesla founder Elon Musk, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, Aramco CEO Amin Nasser, Saudi Public Investment Fund Governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan and hundreds of other corporate leaders, investors and government officials from the two countries.

The President thanked MBS for setting the $1 trillion goal and talked for close to an hour about his affection for the kingdom, ticking off several of the deals signed by the two countries during the day.

“So, number one, I like visiting with you, and we’ve known each other very well, and I really believe we like each other a lot and, number two, for the United States, we’ve brought tremendous investment in and tremendous jobs, and we continue to service your great country very well,” Trump said.

The U.S. leader also said he maintains a “fervent hope” that Saudi Arabia will join the Abraham Accords to normalize relations with Israel, as the UAE, Bahrain and Morocco did in 2020, though he added, “you’ll do it in your own time.”

Earlier in the day, the Saudi Crown Prince took the unusual step of greeting Trump in person when the president landed on a flight from Washington at King Khalid International Airport outside Riyadh.

Unlike former President Joe Biden’s tense visit and cautious fist bump in 2022, MBS stood on the tarmac and patiently watched Trump descend from Air Force One onto a royal purple carpet. The two shook hands and Trump gave the prince a warm shoulder tap before they strode together to the waiting motorcade.

The greeting underlined the intentions on both sides to make Trump’s first regional trip in his second term a public success and broadcast the closeness of the U.S.-Saudi alliance.

Inside the Al-Yamamah Palace where a lavish reception and lunch were held, both leaders were accompanied by top Cabinet ministers and a roster of business leaders, with Trump’s entourage including Musk and OpenAI’s Sam Altman.

Conversations at the Saudi-U.S. Investment Forum – held at the same site beside the marble-lined Ritz-Carlton Hotel as the annual Future Investment Initiative conference – were focused on concrete dealmaking and illustrated the seriousness in both countries to make the most of the rare event, said Tally Zingher, Managing Director of the U.S.-headquartered boutique advisory firm Blue Laurel.

“Being here allows me to listen and observe firsthand how the Saudis are articulating their priorities and how those priorities have already manifested into concrete opportunities for U.S. companies,” Zingher told The Circuit.

Among the headliners addressing the conference were Khalid Bin Abdulaziz Al-Falih, Minister of Investment; Mohammed Al-Jadaan, Minister of Finance; Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, Minister of Energy; Bandar Alkhorayef, Minister of Industry and Minerals and Faisal Alibrahim, Minister of Economy & Planning.

The U.S. delegation was headed by Scott Bessent, Secretary of the Treasury; Howard Lutnick, U.S. Secretary of Commerce; and David Sacks, the White House Special Advisor on AI and Crypto.

From the Saudi business world, the conference featured Muhammad Al Jasser, Chairman, Islamic Development Bank; Nabeel Koshak, CEO of Saudi Venture Capital; Marc Winterhoff, Interim CEO of Lucid; John Pagano, Group CEO of Red Sea Global; Mohammad Abunayyan, Chairman of ACWA Power; Tony Douglas, CEO of Riyadh Air and Jerry Inzerillo, Group CEO of Diriyah Co.

U.S. financiers at the forum included Citigroup’s Jane Fraser, Franklin Templeton’s Jenny Johnson, Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman and Bridgewater’s Ray Dalio, LionTree’s Aryeh Bourkoff and BDT & MSD Partners’ Dina Powell McCormick.

From the U.S. tech industry, Palantir’s Alex Karp joined the forum as well as Alphabet/Google’s Ruth Porat, Amazon’s Andy Jassy, IBM’s Arvind Krishna and Qualcomm’s Cristiano Amon.

With planemakers and defense contractors set to reap billions in Saudi deals, the conference featured Boeing’s Kelly Ortberg, Lockheed Martin’s Michael Williamson, Honeywell’s Ken West and Halliburton’s Jeff Miller.

Among other speakers at the summit, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez is a perennial fixture at the FII conference and hosted a spinoff conference in his city last February, where Trump spoke. Also appearing was Gianni Infantino, President of world soccer’s governing FIFA organization, after Saudi Arabia was picked to host the 2034 World Cup.

Trump takes off for Saudi Arabia to start Gulf deal-making tour

U.S. President Donald Trump departed on Monday for a Middle East tour that will take him to the glittering palaces of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE, with the stated mission of generating trillions of dollars in business for American companies.

After he arrives in Riyadh on Tuesday, the President will meet with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who pledged in January to invest $600 billion in the U.S. over the next four years.

Trump countered that Saudi Arabia should be good for at least $1 trillion, a figure that could be unrealistic given the kingdom’s falling oil revenue and budget shortfalls.

On the sidelines of the palace meeting, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund is convening a Saudi-U.S. Investment Forum that promises to bring more than 1,000 corporate executives, bankers and investors to the capital for a daylong conference modeled on the annual Future Investment Initiative conference.

The U.S. leader is also due to meet the rulers of all six Gulf states together on Wednesday for a summit hosted by Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz.

When Trump arrives in Qatar the following day, he will make a decision on whether to accept a gift offered by the royal family of a Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet that would be converted into an upgraded version of the president’s Air Force One plane.

The trip concludes in Abu Dhabi, where Trump will meet with UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed, along with his Cabinet ministers and prominent business figures, and work out details of the government’s pledge to invest $1.4 trillion in the U.S. over the coming decade.

Disney to open its first Middle East theme park in Abu Dhabi

Abu Dhabi’s Yas Island has been selected as the home for Disney’s seventh theme park – the first in the Middle East – in a major coup for the UAE capital.

The park will be built by Miral Group, with creative design and operational oversight led by Disney.

Announcing the agreement at the W Abu Dhabi Hotel on Wednesday alongside Mohamed Khalifa Al Mubarak, Chairman of the Department of Culture and Tourism Abu Dhabi, Disney CEO Bob Iger said the park would be “authentically Disney and distinctly Emirati, an oasis of extraordinary Disney entertainment that is at the crossroads of the world.”

Arab leaders have been courting Disney for years, with Iger reportedly saying in 2018 that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had made an “impassioned plea” for a theme park in the kingdom, which Disney dismissed at the time as a cultural mismatch.

Abu Dhabi’s Multiply eyes $1B divestment from PAL Cooling

Abu Dhabi’s Multiply Group may be getting ready to divest from its PAL Cooling unit, which keeps the UAE capital’s skyscrapers at tolerable temperatures under the Gulf’s sizzling sun.

The firm, a unit of Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed’s International Holding Co., could raise as much as $1 billion if it’s put up for sale, Bloomberg reports.

PAL’S cooling technology involves pumping chilled water into buildings from centralized plants.

Multiply is working with Standard Chartered on the sale, which is at an early stage and has drawn interest from both regional and international investors, the news agency said.

Multiply went public more than three years ago and has investments in companies ranging from Getty Images to Rihanna’s lingerie company.

Clinton recommends investing in Saudi real estate at Riyadh forum

Developers of New Murabba, Neom, Diriyah and other multibillion-dollar construction projects across Saudi Arabia occupied center stage this week at the Real Estate Future Forum in Riyadh.

Until former U.S. President Bill Clinton mounted the podium Wednesday night at the Four Seasons.

Praising Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s Vision 2030 plan that set off a torrent of building activity across the kingdom, Clinton told a packed ballroom, “It’s worth investing in.”

The 78-year-old statesman, who met with MBS earlier in the day, added: “I think that we Americans should come here and study this 2030 plan and ask ourselves what is our equivalent,” Arab News reports.

Clinton capped the final day of the conference in Saudi Arabia’s capital, where the cube-shapped New Murabba development promises to be the “most complex structure known to man or woman,” the project’s CEO Michael Dyke told a conference panel.

“We will have something like two to three Empire State Buildings on each corner, which anchor the four corners of Mukaab,” Dyke said. At the center will be a residential tower the size of the Eiffel Tower “that will be the only skyscraper in the world that lives inside another building.”

“Below the ground is enormous as well,” he said, adding, “It’s a complete cavernous labyrinth of various different asset classes” with retail space “the size of Dubai Mall that will be capable of extending to be bigger.”

MBS holds $600 billion call with Trump as new term begins

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman and U.S. President Donald Trump are picking up where they left off four years ago.

After congratulating Trump on his return to Washington in a phone call on Wednesday, Prince Mohammed, who is also Prime Minister, said he’s willing to boost investment and trade with the U.S. by $600 billion through 2028.

The Saudi kingdom hopes to participate in the new U.S. administration’s “ability to create unprecedented economic prosperity and opportunity,” the Crown Prince said in the SPA dispatch.

Trump responded on Thursday during a virtual address to the World Economic Forum in Davos.

“I’ll be asking the Crown Prince, who’s a fantastic guy, to round it out to around $1 trillion,” Trump said, adding, “I think they’ll do that because we’ve been very good to them.”

Trump, appearing on screen from the White House during his 15-minute speech, took questions afterward from a panel in Davos that included Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan, TotalEnergies CEO Patrick Pouyanne and Banco Santander Chair Ana Botin.

Trump forged a close relationship with the heir to the Saudi throne during his first term and said he selected the kingdom for his first overseas trip as president in 2017 because of its commitment to buy U.S. weapons and other goods.

Shortly after his inauguration on Monday, Trump told reporters he’d consider visiting Saudi Arabia again if it would agree to buy “another $450 billion or $500 billion” worth of U.S. products.

Even before he stood inside the Capitol this week to take the oath of office, Trump made clear that the Gulf’s power players will find a friend in the White House.

Damac Group CEO Hussain Sajwani for one. The billionaire Dubai builder turned up a week into the new year at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla., where he stood beside the President-elect and pledged an investment of at least $20 billion to build new data centers across the U.S.

Sajwani, who has described himself in press releases as “Trump’s Middle Eastern business partner,” said Damac would move ahead with the plan “if the opportunity, the market, allows us.” 

The relationship between the two men dates back a decade when Trump and Sajwani teamed up to develop luxury golf courses in Dubai. Trump said the massive investment in data centers will “keep America on the cutting edge of technology and artificial intelligence.”

A second Gulf financial chieftain who has been circulating around Trump since his election in November is Saudi Arabia’s Yasir Al-Rumayyan, governor of the Public Investment Fund.

Al-Rumayyan is also Chairman of LIV Golf, the upstart PIF-owned tournament that first challenged and now may merge with the PGA.

The new league, which poached some of the PGA’s top stars with contracts of as much as $200 million, announced Tuesday that it would hold a tournament in April at the Trump National Doral resort near Miami for the fourth consecutive year.

Saudi Arabia wins nod to host soccer’s World Cup in 2034

Saudi Arabia has 10 years to prepare for its stint as the epicenter of global sports when the kingdom hosts soccer’s 2034 World Cup.

Gathered in an online meeting on Wednesday convened by governing body FIFA, representatives of 200 national soccer federations gave their approval to Saudi Arabia, which was uncontested in its bid for hosting the world’s most-watched sporting event, the Associated Press reports.

“We look forward to hosting an exceptional and unprecedented edition of the FIFA World Cup by harnessing our strengths and capabilities to bring joy to football fans around the world,” Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said in a statement.

Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund plans to spend tens of billions of dollars on projects related to the World Cup, including one of the stadiums built 350 meters above the ground in NEOM. Another stadium named for the Crown Prince will be atop a cliff in Riyadh’s Qiddiya sports and entertainment development.

Much like Qatar’s experience hosting the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, Saudi Arabia will be subject to intense scrutiny of its human rights record, including the treatment of women and migrant workers.

NEOM replaces CEO amid megaproject’s delays, rising costs

Saudi Arabia’s banner NEOM project is getting a management shake-up.

The Public Investment Fund-owned company running the kingdom’s $500 billion development along the Red Sea coast announced the departure on Tuesday of CEO Nadhmi al-Nasr.

The move follows months of reports on rising costs and delays for the megaproject, which aims to build a 110-mile linear city called The Line for 9 million people and has been a centerpiece of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s Vision 2030 blueprint for modernizing the Saudi economy.

Aiman al-Mudaifer, the head of PIF’s Local Real Estate Division since 2018, was named as NEOM’s acting CEO. “As NEOM enters a new phase of delivery, this new leadership will ensure operational continuity, agility and efficiency to match the overall vision and objectives of the project,” the company said in a statement.

In his role at PIF, Al-Mudaifer oversees all local real estate investments and infrastructure projects, and he is a board member of several prominent companies in the kingdom.

While changing seats at the top, NEOM also announced on Tuesday that it has hired three international consultants for city planning, design and engineering roles connected to The Line. The firms are Austria’s Delugan Missl Associate Architects, San Francisco-based Gensler and Mott MacDonald in the U.K.