Elon Musk Brings Starlink to Saudi Arabia as U.S. Oligarchs Join Trump in Middle East
Trump bragged about the multi-billion dollar deals between Saudi Arabia and Big Tech.
Elon Musk says his satellite internet provider Starlink, a part of SpaceX, has been approved in Saudi Arabia for maritime and aviation use. The billionaire made the announcement while being interviewed at the Saudi-U.S. Investment Forum in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Tuesday, a conference where several American oligarchs have joined President Donald Trump to cut deals with the Saudi royal family.
Musk 'thanked the kingdom for approving Starlink,' referring to the Saudi government, without explaining further, and teased that he'd like to bring his nascent robotaxis to Saudi Arabia.
'Yeah, so really you can think of a car or future cars as being robots on four wheels. And you know, I think it would be very exciting to have autonomous vehicles here in the kingdom, indeed, if you're amenable,' Musk said
'You heard it here from Elon,' the interviewer said. 'He's bringing his robotaxi to the kingdom.'
Musk didn't offer any specifics and is long known as a bullshitter, so it's not clear how serious the billionaire is about bringing robotaxis to the Middle East. Tesla plans to launch a trial of its robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, in June, but details on that venture are still scarce.
Musk also promoted his tunnel-digging venture, The Boring Company, while on stage, explaining that his goal was to 'solve traffic' by digging tunnels underground. The billionaire hyped The Boring Company relentlessly during Trump's first term but has only delivered the most pathetic results. Musk billed his ideas, like the Hyperloop and The Loop, as next-generation, high-speed answers for transportation. In the end, he's only delivered a slow-moving Tesla driven by a human and hobbled public works projects.
But that didn't stop Musk from insisting that his only functional tunnel ride in Las Vegas, 'feels like teleporting for one part of Vegas to another.' Most people do not describe the experience like that.
Musk's America PAC, one of the political arms the billionaire started to help get Trump elected in 2024, shared a video on X that was billed as Musk's 'full remarks' but seemed to start mid-conversation. Judging from reports out of the conference, it appears Musk had earlier been talking about humanoid robots.
'My prediction, actually, for humanoid robots is that ultimately they will be tens of billions,' Musk said, according to CNBC. 'I think everyone will want to have their personal robot. You can think of it, like, as though you had your own personal C-3PO or R2-D2. But even better.'
President Trump was supposed to be the main attraction at the forum on Tuesday, and his presence in Saudi Arabia was extremely weird, to say the least. Trump opened his speech at the conference with organizers playing Lee Greenwood's song 'God Bless the USA,' as though it was the national anthem or something.
Trump stood there in silence for the entirety of the song as the room all stood in silence. The camera periodically cut to Saudi leader Mohammad bin Salman, sometimes known as MBS, and he appeared to be stifling laughter.
Trump, who earlier had trouble keeping his eyes open, largely focused on U.S. domestic politics and his personal grievances during the speech, which may not have been exceptional if he had been on American soil. Historically, it's more normal for U.S. presidents to expand their focus when traveling overseas and not bring up petty matters in an international setting. These aren't normal times, of course.
Several American business leaders were spotted in Riyadh on Tuesday, including Palantir CEO Alex Karp, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, and Amazon CEO Andy Jassy. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang even announced his company would be selling 18,000 of its latest AI chips to Saudi Arabia, according to CNBC. But not every tech oligarch was on hand for the forum. In fact, Trump called out Apple's CEO saying during his speech that, 'Tim Cook isn't here,' apparently upset about that for some reason.
'This week there are multi-billion dollar commercial deals with Amazon, Oracle, AMD, they're all here… Uber, Qualcomm, Johnson & Johnson, and many more,' Trump said. 'So I want to congratulate everybody. So many great business executives, many of you… most of you, I know.'
Trump went on to say 'they weren't that happy when they saw me,' apparently referring to his election in Nov. 2024, 'and now they're saying, sir, you're doing a great job, thank you very much. It's amazing what a rising market will do.'
And Trump isn't altogether wrong. OpenAI's Sam Altman, who criticized the president during his first term, was spotted meeting with both MBS and Trump in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday. Altman has been rallying behind Trump, as AI boosters believe the Republican president can help inject money into their technology.
Trump has held close ties to MBS and the Saudi royal family, even after the leader became an international pariah during Trump's first term. Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi was murdered at the order of MBS in Istanbul, Turkey, but Trump has always cozied up to the most brutal dictators around the world while denigrating the leaders of liberal democracies.
President Trump said Tuesday that Saudi Arabia would be buying $600 billion of military equipment. And Trump's tech buddies, from Musk to Altman, are happy to go along for the ride as long as it helps their bottom line.
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