Arms, investment and AI top list of deals on busy day for Trump

• US President begins tour of Gulf
• $142bn arms deal agreed with Saudi
• Riyadh to invest $600bn in US

Tens of billions of dollars in new partnerships between the US and Saudi Arabia were announced on Tuesday in Riyadh during the first day of President Donald Trump’s visit to the Gulf.

Artificial intelligence, aviation, energy and defence dominated the flurry of deals, with the White House again touting that the kingdom will invest $600 billion in America. 

The US, for its part, agreed to “the largest defence sales agreement in history” – an arms package worth $142 billion that will give Saudi Arabia access to “state-of-the-art warfighting equipment and services” from more than a dozen US companies, according to a press release from Washington. 

A framework signed by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Trump to strengthen bilateral economic engagement also extends to critical minerals, space and healthcare.

Reuters

Speaking at the Saudi-US Business Forum, the US president praised his hosts for achieving “a modern miracle the Arabian way” and said he hopes for a day when “the Middle East is defined by commerce, not chaos.” 

Many American business heavyweights are in the Gulf for the presidential visit and participated in the investor gathering, including Stephen Schwarzman, ​CEO of the Blackstone Group, Larry Fink, ​CEO of BlackRock, and Jenny Johnson, president and CEO of Franklin Templeton Investment.

Nvidia’s chief executive Jensen Huang said at the event that his firm will provide Saudi Arabia’s AI company Humain with 18,000 microchips to deploy across local data centres. 

Amazon Web Services will also invest more than $5 billion to build an “AI Zone” in Saudi Arabia in partnership with Humain, according to a press release. This comes in addition to a similar commitment previously made by AWS in the kingdom.

Reuters

“We thank AWS for doubling down on their long term partnership with the kingdom,” said Abdullah Alswaha, the Saudi minister of communications and information technology, noting that the new tie-up “reinforces Saudi Arabia’s position as a global partner of choice in the age of AI.” 

Trump officials were separately working on a plan to clear Nvidia to sell more than a million chips to the UAE, far above export restrictions imposed by the previous Joe Biden administration, according to Bloomberg, who also reported that the Saudi sovereign investor, the Public Investment Fund, is looking to buy 30 aircraft from Boeing. 

Aramco’s chief executive Amin Nasser told the US-Saudi Investment Forum that the oil giant plans to put $3.4 billion into the American refining sector, Reuters said. 

Partnerships with American liquefied natural gas producer NextDecade and utility company Sempra were also struck by Aramco.

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Trump said at the investment conference that his “fervent hope” is that Saudi Arabia will ultimately sign an agreement to normalise diplomatic relationships with Israel and join the Abraham Accords and that, when that happens, it will “be a special day in the Middle East, with the whole world watching.” 

The US president also announced that he would lift sanctions on Syria. The White House said he had agreed “to say hello” to Syrian president Ahmed al-Sharaa “while in Saudi Arabia” on Wednesday.

Trump is due to stay in Riyadh on Wednesday for a GCC summit before travelling to Qatar.