Apple wasn’t present, nor was Microsoft.
The big deals went to Musk.
Here are highlights of what was announced yesterday:
- A nearly $142 billion defense agreement involving over a dozen American companies and covering air force and space abilities, border security, communications and more
- A deal for Nvidia to sell about 18,000 of its latest chips to the Saudi artificial intelligence start-up Humain to power new data centers, and for AMD to sell about $10 billion worth of processors to Humain as well — with shares of both chipmakers soaring yesterday
- About $80 billion worth of investments by Google, Oracle, Uber and others in “cutting-edge transformative technologies in both countries”
- About $19 billion worth in total of gas turbine by GE Vernova and plane exports by Boeing
- A commitment by DataVolt, a Saudi company, to invest $20 billion in artificial intelligence data centers and energy infrastructure in the U.S.
- Saudi Arabia’s approval of Starlink use in the region, according to Elon Musk
The deal flow is why top corporate leaders were in Riyadh yesterday. Consider who was at a U.S.-Saudi investment lunch: Musk; Jensen Huang of Nvidia (whom Trump gave a shout-out to, while noting that Tim Cook of Apple wasn’t present); Sam Altman of OpenAI, who is raising billions to build data centers as well as selling A.I. services; Larry Fink of BlackRock, who has assiduously courted Saudi wealth; Andy Jassy of Amazon; Dara Khosrowshahi of Uber; Alex Karp of the data consulting firm Palantir; Kelly Ortberg of Boeing; and more.