Artificial intelligence in spotlight
Aviation, defence and energy
During his trip to the Gulf region from May 13 to 16, US president Donald Trump visited Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE and announced a series of deals across a number of sectors, which, according to the White House, added up to nearly $2.5 trillion.
Artificial intelligence
Saudi Arabia’s newly-established AI developer Humain said it partnered with Nvidia to build “AI factories” in the kingdom that will ultimately have a capacity of up to 500 megawatts. Nvidia will provide “several hundred thousand” of its most advanced GPUs during five years, starting with 18,000 Nvidia GB300 Grace Blackwell chips in the first phase.
The new partnership between Nvidia and Saudi Arabia also extends to initiatives in the cloud and digital government services, as well as dedicated training and education.
Nvidia’s smaller competitor AMD is also party to the effort through its own $10 billion agreement with Humain.
Humain separately partnered with Amazon Web Services to jointly invest more than $5 billion to develop an “AI Zone” in Saudi Arabia. This comes on top of an earlier AWS commitment to put a similar $5 billion into artificial-intelligence infrastructure in the kingdom.
Qualcomm and Humain signed a memorandum of understanding to develop “next-generation AI data centers, infrastructure and cloud-to-edge services” in Saudi Arabia, including by incorporating the Saudi firm’s Arabic large language models into “the wide ecosystem of AI edge devices powered by Qualcomm Technologies’ processors”.
UAE and US officials said the two countries will partner to establish a 5GW joint AI campus in Abu Dhabi through a consortium of US companies and Emirati’s AI developer G42. Underpinning the effort is a new government-to-government technology framework the “US-UAE AI Acceleration Partnership”.
In Qatar, Al Rabban Capital joined up with quantum computing firm Quantinuum to spend $1 billion to “accelerate” the technology’s adoption “in Qatar and the region”.
Aviation
Qatar Airways agreed to purchase 210 wide-body jets from Boeing for about $96 billion, the largest ever order of this kind for the American aircraft manufacturer.
Etihad will also acquire 28 Boeing 787 and 777X aircraft with GE engines for $14.5 billion.
AviLease, an aircraft leasing company owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, ordered up to 30 Boeing 737 MAX jets.
Defence
President Donald Trump agreed to sell Saudi Arabia about $142 billion worth of weapons and supporting services from US defence companies.
Qatar agreed to buy $1 billion worth of “counterdrone capabilities” from US manufacturer Raytheon, a further $2 billion for a “MQ-9B remotely piloted aircraft system” from General Atomics, and to invest $10 billion in the Al Udeid Air Base, the largest US military facility in the Middle East.
Energy and commodities
The US and the UAE plan to invest $440 billion in the energy sector over the next decade, Sultan Al Jaber, group CEO of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc), announced on Friday. At least $60 billion of this will be in UAE energy projects. XRG, Adnoc’s international investment arm, is evaluating investment opportunities in the US gas sector.
Global infrastructure investment manager I Squared Capital partnered with the Arab Energy Fund (TAEF), a multilateral impact financial institution focused on the Middle East and North African energy sector, to invest in a dedicated infrastructure investment strategy targeting the region.
Saudi Aramco signed 34 interim deals with US energy companies worth upwards of $90 billion.
Among those, Aramco announced a $3.4 billion agreement to integrate petrochemicals production into the Motiva refinery in Texas and agreements with American liquefied natural gas producer NextDecade and utility company Sempra.
Emirates Global Aluminum will put $4 billion toward developing a primary aluminum smelter in Oklahoma. EGA will separately partner with the UAE’s Tawazun Council and RTX, or Raytheon, on a “pioneering Gallium project”.
ExxonMobil, Occidental Petroleum and EOG Resources have partnered with Adnoc in a $60 million deal to expand oil and natural gas production in both countries.
Florida-based Holtec International and the UAE’s Industrial Holding Company are entering cooperation to build a fleet of Holtec’s SMR-300 small modular reactors, starting at the Palisades site in Michigan. This agreement includes a commitment of $10 billion and an additional $20 billion for fleet projects, helping to revitalise American nuclear energy infrastructure, strengthen domestic energy security and create high-skilled jobs in engineering, construction and advanced manufacturing across the United States.
Finance
Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund announced a memorandum of understanding with US asset manager Franklin Templeton to funnel $5 billion from domestic and international investors into the kingdom’s public and private markets.
PIF also agreed with global investment company Neuberger Berman “to support up to US $6 billion in investments in Saudi Arabia” and launch “a Riyadh-based multi-asset investment management platform”.
The Saudi sovereign wealth fund separately said it will launch an index mandate focused on Saudi equities in partnership with BlackRock.
Qatar Investment Authority plans to put $500 billion in the next 10 years, the sovereign wealth fund’s head Mohammed Al Sowaidi told Bloomberg.
