The United States and Saudi Arabia have finalized a series of major investment agreements following the visit of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to Washington, D.C..- his first trip to the U.S. since 2018. The deals were announced during the U.S.–Saudi Investment Forum, which brought together President Donald Trump, senior U.S. officials, and more than 400 American business leaders. Also present were Saudi Arabia’s investment minister and the leaders of several Saudi state-owned companies.
The forum focused on increasing bilateral investment in both countries, as well as diversifying Saudi Arabia’s economy. It featured a strong focus on politically prescient economic issues such as AI and data centers, rare earth minerals, and energy resources.
Over 270 billion dollars of deals were signed directly between American and Saudi firms. Saudi Arabia’s government-backed AI firm HUMAIN signed deals with Nvidia and AMD to purchase chips necessary for AI development, as well as a deal with xAI to construct a 500-megawatt data center in the kingdom to boost Saudi domestic AI development capability. “The agreement that we are signing today in many areas – in technology and AI, in rare materials, magnets, etc. – will create a lot of investment opportunities.”, the Saudi Crown Prince stated.
Saudi Arabian mining company Ma’aden signed a deal with MP Materials - the leading U.S. rare earths refiner - and the newly renamed U.S. Department of War. Together, they plan to establish a jointly owned rare earth mining and refining facility in Saudi Arabia. This comes after the American government’s push to reduce reliance on Chinese rare earth imports, as well as the assessment from the Saudi Ministry of Industry and Mineral Resources, that Saudi Arabia holds the world’s fourth largest deposits of rare earth metals.
The investment forum comes after a series of political talks between the United States and Saudi Arabia over the last year. U.S. President Donald Trump visited the kingdom in May and announced the renewal of the longstanding security partnership between the two countries. The recent business deals and cooperation on defense and security point to a continuation of the well-developed relationship between the two countries, as well as the continued U.S. business focus on the Middle East.
At DMX Associates, we closely follow newly established partnerships between key global players, such as the renewed cooperation between the United States and Saudi Arabia, to keep our clients informed about developments that may shape future opportunities.
