AI and energy deals take shape at Saudi-US business forum

Saudi and US companies announced deals related to artificial intelligence and energy on Wednesday, a day after Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman boosted the kingdom's investment commitment into the US to $1 trillion.

The announcements, made during the Saudi-US Investment Forum, come as US President Donald Trump and Prince Mohammed spoke of deepening ties related to investment, security and technology.

“The partnership between our two nations is among the most consequential in the entire world, and together, the Crown Prince and I are making an alliance stronger and more powerful than it's ever been before,” Mr Trump said in remarks at the Kennedy Centre.

US approves export of Nvidia AI chips to UAE and Saudi Arabia

Read More

The business forum was attended by crowds of business executives including the heads of Aramco, Nvidia, Qualcomm, General Dynamics and Pfizer. Mr Trump said $270 billion in deals between dozens of companies would be signed at the forum.

Prince Mohammed announced on Tuesday that the kingdom would invest $1 trillion in the US, up from its previous $600 billion commitment. He did not provide details or a timeline. He also said he expects Saudi Arabia to spend $50 billion on chips in the “near term”.

The US and Saudi Arabia also signed a strategic AI partnership that will include the supply of advanced semiconductors. US companies need government approval to export chips to Saudi Arabia.

Regional experts have questioned how Saudi Arabia will be able to afford the $1 trillion commitment as it focuses on domestic investments. The kingdom is also running a current account and fiscal deficit, and is also facing softening oil prices amid the unwinding of production cuts by Opec+.

Humain deals

Among the announcements made on Wednesday was the formation of a joint venture involving the Public Investment Fund-backed Humain, which is expected to play a critical role in the kingdom's efforts to become an AI exporter.

Saudi Arabia has been investing heavily in AI as part of its broader diversification efforts under its Vision 2030 project.

Humain, AMD and Cisco said the joint venture, which has yet to be named, would deliver up to 1 gigawatt of AI infrastructure by 2030.

The companies said it will combine Humain's data centres with technology from AMD and Cisco, which will be exclusive technology partners. AMD and Humain announced plans in May to invest up to $10 billion for 500MW of AI computing capacity over the next five years.

Adobe and Qualcomm also said they are linking up with the Saudi AI company to create content in Arabic using Humain's large language model Allam.

Trump gleeful as Saudi Crown Prince announces $1 trillion investment in US

01:03

Humain announced a strategic partnership with the New York-based Global AI to build a large-scale AI data centre in the US. It said the data centre will be designed for high-density compute and include Nvidia AI infrastructure.

“I believe Saudi Arabia is firmly on track to become the third pillar of global AI infrastructure,” Humain chief executive Tareq Amin said in a statement.

Humain has also led a $900 million financing round for video generation start-up Luma AI. The financing also includes participation from AMD's venture arm, as well as existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, Amplify Partners and Matrix Partners.

Luma is also linking up with Humain to build a 2GW computer supercluster known as “Project Halo”, which the companies said will begin operations in the first quarter of next year.

AWS and Humain also announced the installation of up to 150,000 AI accelerators to develop an "AI Zone" in Riyadh that will support training and access to Nvidia infrastructure.

Musk's xAI in Saudi Arabia

Tesla chief executive Elon Musk said his AI start-up xAI, which features the Grok chatbot, also plans to develop a 500MW data centre in Saudi Arabia with Humain, which will rely on chips from Nvidia.

Mr Musk made the announcement alongside Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang during a panel session earlier on Wednesday.

The project represents xAI's first large-scale computing centre outside the US.

“This collaboration represents the first of its kind partnership to deploy xAI’s Grok across an entire country,” Mr Musk said in a statement.

Aramco signs series of deals

Saudi energy giant Aramco also announced 17 agreements with a potential value of more than $30 billion with US companies. Aramco said the agreements build on the previous 34 announced in May, bringing the total value to about $120 billion.

The preliminary deals range from liquefied natural gas to advanced materials manufacturing and financial services.

Among the LNG deals is a possible investment with MidOcean Energy in the Lake Charles LNG project in Louisiana, near the Gulf Coast. It also announced an agreement with Commonwealth LNG on a separate Louisiana-based LNG project relating to Aramco Trading's potential purchase of LNG and gas.

The preliminary agreements come as Aramco aims for 20 million tonnes a year of LNG capacity.

Aramco signed a deal this year with NextDecade on a final agreement to buy 1.2 million tonnes a year of LNG from the Rio Grande LNG Facility's Train 4.

“For more than 90 years, we built a lot of strategic and historic relations with US partners. And it is continuing to grow in the US today,” Aramco chief executive Amin Nasser said during a panel discussion.

Other announcements

Saudi mining company Maaden announced a binding agreement with rare earth miner MP Materials and the US Defence Department for a joint venture to develop a rare earth minerals refinery in the kingdom. MP Materials and the Pentagon announced a public-private partnership in July.

And in a separate announcement with Microsoft, the PIF and Saudi Information Technology announced a preliminary agreement to explore delivering Microsoft's sovereign-cloud services in the kingdom.