Some of the biggest names in tech attended President Donald Trump's Tuesday dinner with Saudi Arabia Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, reflecting the industry's deepening ties to both the White House and the Middle East Kingdom. On Wednesday, some of the participants announced new deals with a Saudi-backed firm around data centres and artificial intelligence infrastructure.
Elon Musk, the world's richest man and head of Tesla, SpaceX and X, made his first public appearance at the White House at the dinner after exiting the controversial Department of Government Efficiency initiative in the summer.
On Wednesday, Musk's xAI, the maker of the Grok chatbot, announced a deal to build a data centre in Saudi Arabia in partnership with the Saudi government-backed company Humain and chipmaker giant Nvidia. Saudi Arabia also partnered with Musk on his 2022 purchase of X, formerly Twitter.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was also at Tuesday's dinner and has appeared with Trump at numerous events this year, underscoring the dominant chipmaker's importance to US trade and tech policy. Huang visited Saudi Arabia with Trump in May, where he committed to selling over 18,000 chips to Saudi Arabia.
Trump, Musk, Huang and Saudi officials attended the US-Saudi Investment Forum on Wednesday as tech deals were announced.
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff attended Tuesday's dinner, a month after a storm of controversy following his support – later retracted – for Trump to send the National Guard to San Francisco. A week later, Trump called off a federal immigration enforcement "surge" after he said he talked to Benioff, Huang and other tech leaders.
Saudi Arabia's minister of communications and information technology, Abdullah Alswaha, appeared with Benioff onstage at Salesforce's Dreamforce conference last month.
Apple CEO Tim Cook, OpenAI President Greg Brockman, AMD CEO Lisa Su, Zoom CEO Eric Yuan, Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins, Dell CEO Michael Dell and Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong were also present at the dinner, according to a list released by the White House.
AMD, Cisco and Humain announced an AI joint venture on Wednesday. – San Francisco Chronicle/Tribune News Service
