Saudi Arabia’s on-again, off-again effort to build the world’s tallest skyscraper is on again.

Kingdom Holding Co. says construction of its planned 1-kilometer-high Jeddah Tower has reached 74 of its 170 stories and should be completed in 2028.

The company, founded by Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, began construction in 2013 but halted it amid a 2018 anti-corruption purge, during which the government detained the billionaire royal at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Riyadh. He was released three months later after agreeing to an unspecified financial settlement.

In October, Finland’s KONE Corp. won a contract to equip the building with high-speed elevators.

Preparations are moving into high gear for next week’s White House visit by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, with an investor summit now set to take place on the sidelines.

The conference, co-hosted by the Saudi Ministry of Investment and the U.S.-Saudi Business Council, will take place on Nov. 19 at Washington’s John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, CBS reports. 

While still unconfirmed, the event in billed in an invitation as a platform for “exclusive business matchmaking” through which participants will “explore new investment horizons across critical sectors, including energy, technology, financial services, infrastructure, and healthcare.” 

No word yet whether the investor summit will be attended by MBS and President Donald Trump, who will meet the day before in the Oval Office and join a black-tie dinner likely to include top executives from Wall Street and Silicon Valley. When Trump visited Saudi Arabia in May, the U.S. leader joined the Crown Prince at an investor conference in Riyadh alongside Tesla’s Elon Musk, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, BlackRock’s Larry Fink and Citigroup’s Jane Fraser.

Already gathering in Washington are some of MBS’s top lieutenants who are meeting with Trump administration counterparts to set the agenda for talks covering some $600 million that the Saudi kingdom has committed to spending with U.S. businesses. Among the most watched was the meeting on Tuesday between Yasir Al-Rumayyan, Governor of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, and U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

Prince Khalid bin Salman, the Saudi Minister of Defense, met on Tuesday with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, and U.S. Special Envoy for the Middle East Steve Witkoff. The meeting was also attended by Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. Princess Reema bint Bandar.

Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund is joining forces with Orix, a Tokyo-based financial services company, to launch a $2.5 billion private equity vehicle hunting for opportunities across Japan.

The agreement marks the Qatar Investment Authority’s first Japan-focused PE investment, with Orix supplying 60% of the capital and QIA filling in the rest, Bloomberg reports.

Qatar joins a growing number of investment firms, including Blackstone and KKR, that are looking into buyouts in Japan.

The new Japan fund will target companies valued above $195 million, guided by an independent investment entity while both firms participate as limited partners.

The UAE is positioning itself as a laboratory for the future of aviation and a growing hub for traditional air traffic.

Abu Dhabi announced plans today to build 10 “vertiports” for electric air taxis, beginning with sites at Zayed International Airport and Al Bateen Executive Airport.

The project, which is expected to start operations in the next two years, aims to connect key commercial and tourism districts while reducing pressure on road networks, the Abu Dhabi Investment Office said.

Meanwhile, Sir Tim Clark, the longtime chief of Emirates, outlined a vision for his successors that aims to strengthen Dubai’s position as an international flight hub and enlarge its fleet with hundreds of aircraft. 

The blueprint includes moving operations to a new terminal at Al Maktoum International Airport, building up network routes in Africa and Latin America, and strengthening Emirates’ partnership with budget airline flydubai, Clark told The National.

“With me out of it, at least we would have set them on the path,” Clark said. “What they do with it after that is up to them.”

Abu Dhabi is making its most aggressive pitch yet to become a global capital of self-driving vehicles, kicking off its inaugural Autonomous Week with a parade of pilot projects across land, air and sea mobility. 

In the opening panels of Monday’s Autonomous Summit, senior government officials touted the UAE’s regulatory advantages and pushed companies to develop their technology in the Emirates.

“Do not waste your time in any other country,” said Faisal Al Bannai, adviser to the UAE President and Secretary General of the Advanced Technology Research Council. “This is the city to be in.”

The talkfest kicks off a week-long showcase at Yas Marina Circuit, the home of Abu Dhabi’s F1 Grand Prix, which includes a global soccer tournament for humanoid robots, a car racing league and an exhibition space. Guests on Day 1 were welcomed by robots serving up coffee and ice cream, while others mowed lawns.

Companies including California-based firms Joby Aviation and Archer Aviation are awaiting licenses to start commercial operation of flying taxis in the UAE, while multiple operators are already experimenting with driverless cars and buses. 

Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohamed, Chairman of the Smart and Autonomous Systems Council, attended the summit, seated alongside Dr. Sultan Al Jaber, the UAE Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology and CEO of the ADNOC national oil company. “While other cities are still testing pilot programmes, Abu Dhabi and the emirate at large have already integrated autonomy across land, sea and air,” Sheikh Hamdan wrote in an opinion piece for The National.

Saudi Arabia is hosting the U.N. World Tourism Organization’s General Assembly this week as it unveils a broader tourism strategy aimed at attracting mass-market travelers, not just high-end visitors.

Saudi Tourism Minister Ahmed Al-Khateeb said the shift marks a new phase in the government’s campaign to turn tourism into a major economic engine and draw 150 million visitors annually by the end of the decade.

“We have already started building destinations for the middle class and upper middle class,” Al-Khateeb told Reuters in an interview. “We will not ignore this segment.”

Delegates from more than 150 countries are attending the event in Riyadh, where Saudi officials are promoting investments tied to sustainability, heritage preservation and new technologies such as artificial intelligence.

With Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman due to visit the White House this month, U.S. President Donald Trump is attempting to inject new life into the Abraham Accords.

First signed five years ago to normalize Israel’s ties with the UAE, Bahrain and Morocco, the agreement will be expanded to include the central Asian nation of Kazakhstan, whose population is mostly Muslim, Trump said on Thursday.

Posting on his Truth Social media platform, Trump said he held a three-way call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev.

The U.S. leader said Kazakhstan would be the first of “many” new countries to join in his second term.

Tokayev said his decision to join the accords was driven primarily by financial benefits, The New York Times reports. “We will get certain dividends from the point of view of economic cooperation,” he said.

Trump has repeatedly coaxed Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader to join the agreement and said that the issue will be on the agenda for their Nov. 18 meeting.

Prince Mohammed, who has said he would like to improve ties with Israel, more recently conditioned signing the accords on the Jewish state agreeing on a “pathway” to Palestinian statehood.

Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund will back a U.S. women’s golf event for the first time on the LPGA Tour when the Aramco Championship is held in Las Vegas this coming April.

The sovereign wealth fund said it will offer a $4 million purse, making it one of the largest prize funds for a regular LPGA event outside the four major women’s golf competitions in the U.S., the Associated Press reports.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has steered the PIF into becoming a leading backer of professional sports, creating the LIV Golf tournament and becoming a sponsor of the ATP tennis series. The PIF also owns a stake in the English Premier League’s Newcastle United football club. LPGA commissioner Craig Kessler described the Saudi-sponsored event as “exactly where we’re headed” in building a truly global schedule.

The move comes amid ongoing tensions in men’s professional golf, where efforts to merge the PGA Tour and PIF-backed LIV Golf remain stalled. Negotiations that once seemed poised to formally integrate LIV’s model into the PGA Tour framework were never finalized, leaving both sides in limbo. Although a framework agreement was signed in June 2023 between PIF and the PGA Tour and European Tour, the deal has yet to yield a merger.

Meanwhile, U.S. President Donald Trump used the PIF-sponsored American Business Forum in Miami on Wednesday to celebrate the one-year anniversary of his election victory. Asserting that the U.S. has the “greatest economy” in the world, he blamed Republican setbacks in Tuesday’s off-year elections on the party’s communication failures, not economic conditions, the AP reported.

Princess Reema bint Bandar, Saudi Arabia’s Ambassador to the U.S., hailed technology ties between the two countries during a moderated discussion at the forum.|

Also causing a stir was an unverified report that the PIF is preparing a competing $70 billion offer for Warner Bros. Discovery amid Paramount’s attempt to buy the U.S. media and entertainment conglomerate.