Saudi Arabia wants to build its post-oil future with massive AI data centers — Trump and U.S. tech have big incentives to oblige

President Donald Trump hit the sands of Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, kicking off a Gulf tour at the Saudi-U.S. Investment Forum—joined by tech CEOs including Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, AMD’s Lisa Su, and Tesla’s Elon Musk. 

Saudi Arabia’s AI ambitions were front and center as Trump made clear he is looking for even more U.S. investment from the Kingdom, seeking an additional $400 billion above the $600 billion Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman already promised in a January phone call with Trump.