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The US and Saudi Arabia announced agreements worth $600bn in artificial intelligence, defence and other sectors on Tuesday, as President Donald Trump began the first leg of his dealmaking, three-nation tour of the oil-rich Gulf.
The deals included a commitment by Saudi Arabia’s new state-owned AI company, Humain, to build AI infrastructure in the kingdom using several “hundred thousands” of Nvidia’s most advanced chips over the next five years.
That would make it one of the biggest AI chip orders by a state company, underlining the scale of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s ambitions to position Saudi Arabia as a global AI hub and boosting Nvidia’s desire to build “sovereign AI” infrastructure around the world.
The first phase of Humain’s investment will involve deploying 18,000 of Nvidia’s latest “Blackwell” servers, Nvidia said.
The agreements were inked as Trump looks to secure deals and investment pledges worth more than $1tn on his trip to the Gulf, which will also include stops in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
The traditional US allies boast sovereign wealth funds that collectively manage in excess of $3tn and have all stated their ambitions to invest heavily in AI.
Many of the US’s most powerful tech executives were also in Riyadh, including Elon Musk, OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Nvidia’s chief executive Jensen Huang as Saudi Arabia hosted a glitzy investment forum. Top financiers including BlackRock’s Larry Fink, Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman and Citigroup’s Janet Fraser also attended.
US tech companies have been increasingly looking to the Gulf, which manages some of the world’s largest and most active sovereign wealth funds, to raise capital and lure investments.
The Gulf states, meanwhile, view AI as a critical part of their plans to diversify their economies away from oil and develop new industries, hoping to leverage their abundant energy resources and the financial muscle of their sovereign funds.
It comes as the Trump administration last week scrapped a Biden-era rule that would have seen Saudi Arabia, along with dozens of other countries including India and Singapore, face limitations on their purchases of the most powerful US-designed AI chips.
Riyadh launched Humain, which will be chaired by Prince Mohammed and owned by the Public Investment Fund, the $940bn sovereign wealth fund, to steer its strategy and investments in the sector on Monday, the day before Trump arrived.
