Washington, D.C. — The U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum held in Washington on November 19, 2025, became the stage for an unprecedented flurry of announcements, as President Donald Trump and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman revealed a wave of investment deals and technology partnerships that could reshape the global landscape for artificial intelligence, energy, and critical minerals.
At the heart of the forum, President Trump hailed what he described as “groundbreaking” agreements with Saudi Arabia, covering artificial intelligence (AI), civil nuclear energy, and critical minerals. According to Trump, more than $270 billion in agreements and sales between dozens of private companies were moving forward, with Saudi state media claiming the total value of deals reached as high as $557 billion. The forum drew a diverse crowd—from billionaire tech executives and AI behemoths to small law firms and start-ups—all eager to strike deals with the oil-rich kingdom.
The Saudi Crown Prince, who exercises sweeping control over the kingdom’s $1 trillion sovereign wealth fund, committed to investing up to $1 trillion in the United States. Trump, ever the dealmaker, quipped that he had even encouraged the prince to consider raising the pledge to $1.5 trillion. While the precise breakdown between pledges and actual cash commitments remains to be seen, the sheer scale of the announcements underscored the deepening economic ties between the two energy superpowers.
One of the most significant deals centered on critical minerals. MP Materials, which owns the only operating rare earths mine in the United States, announced a partnership with the U.S. Department of Defense to finance a 49 percent equity stake in a new rare earths refinery in Saudi Arabia. The Saudi Arabian Mining Company (Maaden), majority-owned by the Saudi state, will hold at least 51 percent. As Middle East Eye reported, the U.S. Department of War took a 15 percent stake in MP Materials earlier this year and committed to purchasing its rare earth products for a decade at double the current market price. With China’s dominance over global rare earth refining, this deal is seen as a strategic move to diversify supply chains for technologies from smartphones to fighter jets.
Technology partnerships were front and center, with Amazon, Cisco, Adobe, AMD, and Elon Musk’s xAI all inking agreements with the Saudi-backed AI firm Humain. Notably, Musk himself attended a black-tie dinner with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and later took the stage at the forum to announce a massive new project: a 500-megawatt data center in Saudi Arabia, powered by Nvidia’s cutting-edge chips. “The future of intelligence will be engineered through massive and efficient computer combined with the most advanced AI models. HUMAIN’s capabilities enable us to build that future faster in Saudi Arabia,” Musk said, as quoted by Middle East Eye.
Humain, established with the kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund, is at the center of Saudi Arabia’s AI ambitions. The company announced a $900 million investment in California-based startup Luma AI, which specializes in AI-generated videos. Luma will use Humain’s data centers to power its work and plans to be a customer of the 2-gigawatt Project Halo—one of the world’s largest AI projects now under construction in Saudi Arabia. For comparison, 1 gigawatt is roughly the electricity consumption of all of San Francisco.
Amazon, already active in the kingdom’s AI sector, unveiled plans to build a data center “AI Zone” in Riyadh for global customers and to train 100,000 Saudi citizens in cloud computing. The partnership with Humain will deploy and manage up to 150,000 AI accelerators in this AI Zone. AMD, Cisco, and Humain further announced plans to develop 1 gigawatt of AI infrastructure by 2030, with Cisco’s spokesperson Robyn Blum emphasizing that Wednesday’s announcements were focused on Saudi Arabia, including a planned 100-megawatt project.
Saudi Arabia is pitching itself as an attractive data center hub, touting electricity prices that are 30 to 50 percent lower than the global average, thanks to its vast reserves of fossil fuels and solar energy. The kingdom’s AI company Datavolt is building a $5 billion data center on the Red Sea coast, and Humain is constructing facilities across Riyadh and Dammam, aiming for a total of 6.6 gigawatts of capacity by 2034.
The U.S. and Saudi Arabia also signed a Strategic Artificial Intelligence Partnership, which, according to a press release, “encompasses the supply of advanced semiconductors.” This partnership, as Bloomberg reported, is expected to “capitalize on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s competitive advantages in available land, energy resources, and geographic location to build AI technology clusters.” While Saudi Arabia has been eager to purchase thousands of sophisticated AI chips, the Trump administration has yet to finalize export licenses, though Trump said he was working to approve them.
On the energy front, Trump made clear his administration’s priorities. He announced a “one-approval process” for AI-related power generation projects, promising approvals within two to three weeks instead of years. He directed EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin to fast-track infrastructure for data centers and called on Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to accelerate oil and gas project approvals. “Will you please drill a little bit faster?” Trump urged, before praising Energy Secretary Chris Wright for setting records. He didn’t mince words about renewables either, declaring, “Windmills don’t work. What does work is natural gas, oil, nuclear and other things … but the windmills are a disaster.”
Climate advocates have pushed back, arguing that the administration’s rollbacks of federal support for renewables will lead to higher energy prices. Nonetheless, Trump lauded his team for streamlining permits for all new energy projects, including mining, and wrapping up reviews within a month. “Maximum is 28 days, that’s why we have so much under construction,” he said.
Saudi Aramco, the kingdom’s oil giant, signed 17 preliminary deals with U.S. companies on Wednesday, worth over $30 billion. These projects span liquefied natural gas, financial services, and advanced materials manufacturing, building on commitments made earlier this year. “We expect the multi-billion-dollar MoUs and agreements announced today to act as a springboard for further progress,” said Aramco CEO Amin Nasser in a statement quoted by Middle East Eye.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has thrown its weight behind AI development at home, backing initiatives such as Stargate—a partnership led by OpenAI and Oracle to invest at least $500 billion in AI and data centers across the U.S. over four years. The administration also plans to build data centers at national labs to further cement America’s leadership in AI.
As the dust settles from this week’s whirlwind of deals and declarations, one thing is clear: the U.S. and Saudi Arabia are doubling down on their roles as global leaders in both energy and artificial intelligence. The real test, though, will be how these ambitious pledges translate into tangible results for both economies—and for the future of technology worldwide.