Trump is headed to Saudi Arabia — and a 'who's who' of US CEOs are right behind him
Andy Jassy, Amazon
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy is listed as a featured speaker as Saudi Arabia is working to establish itself as a global AI leader. Amazon Web Services, the company's cloud business, has committed to investing more than $5.3 billion in Saudi Arabia in the coming years to build data centers for the computing power needed to run AI models.
Alex Karp, Palantir
The Palantir CEO is scheduled to speak at the conference, and has recently credited a pro-defense tech wave for solid first quarter performance. Alex Karp said on a recent earnings call that part of Palantir's success had to do with "an unvarnished cacophony of the combination of 20 years of investment and a massive cultural shift in the US."
Elon Musk
Elon Musk is listed as a speaker, just a few months after Tesla announced it will be entering the Saudi market. The world's richest man has previously had a somewhat rocky relationship with Saudi Arabia over unsuccessful business deals.
Larry Fink
BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, launched an investment firm in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, last year, and CEO Larry Fink stressed the firm's global reach on a recent earnings call. He was once a leading voice on issues like ESG and DEI, but the firm's recent annual letter didn't mention either issue. Instead, Fink wrote in it that BlackRock is now betting big on the private market.
David Sacks
Trump's AI and crypto czar is among the White House officials scheduled to speak. On Sunday evening, David Sacks posted about arriving in the Middle East on X, saying that America needs to be the "partner-of-choice" when it comes to AI, and that "effective AI diplomacy is vital now more than ever."
Jensen Huang
Representatives from Nvidia spoke at this year's Global AI Summit, hosted in Saudi Arabia, and now CEO Jensen Huang is set to represent the chips giant at Tuesday's conference. A top Saudi AI official told CNBC in September that the country hoped to get access to Nvidia's high-performance chips within the year. Groq, a semiconductor startup and potential competitor to Nvidia, announced that it has gotten a $1.5 billion commitment from Saudi Arabia to expand the delivery of its AI chips.
Jane Fraser
Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser is among the Wall Street leaders slated to speak. She also spoke at Saudi Arabia's Future Investment Initiative in October.
Stephen Schwarzman
Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of Blackstone, also spoke at Saudi Arabia's Future Investment Initiative ahead of the presidential election and said he thought that Trump would be a better president the second time around. Last year, the billionaire said he wants Blackstone to become the "largest financial investor" in global AI infrastructure.
Kelly Ortberg, Boeing
Boeing has had a relationship with Saudi Arabia since the 1940s, according to its website. Though CEO Kelly Ortberg is scheduled to speak in Saudi Arabia, Boeing has made headlines related to a different country in the Middle East, after multiple outlets reported that the Qatari royal family plans to give the Trump administration a Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet to be used as Air Force One. The plane is worth a staggering $400 million and has been criticized by figures on both political parties for potential conflicts of interest.
Ruth Porat, Alphabet and Google
Arvind Krishna, IBM
IBM CEO Arvind Krishna recently announced a new slate of AI products from IBM as the company seeks to grow its generative AI business. In February, IBM announced it was expanding its AI efforts in Saudi Arabia and the company opened regional headquarters in the country last year.
Omeed Malik, Founder and President of 1789 capital
Omeed Malik founder and president of 1789 Capital, a VC firm that counts Donald Trump Jr. among its partners. He recently started a private club in Washington, DC, that caters to the MAGA social scene once co-hosted a Trump fundraiser that raised upwards of $10 million. 1789 Capital invests in energy and software, among other industries, and it bills itself as anti-ESG. Instead, it focuses on "EIG" — entrepreneurship, innovation, and growth.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Forbes
31 minutes ago
- Forbes
Circle Soars In First-Ever Stablecoin IPO, Making CEO A Billionaire
Jeremy Allaire, CEO of Circle, at the Token2049 conference in Singapore in Sept. 2024. Photographer: Suhaimi Abdullah/Bloomberg Circle, the company behind the $61 billion stablecoin USDC, made a roaring debut on the New York Stock Exchange Thursday, becoming the first stablecoin issuer to go public and making CEO and cofounder Jeremy Allaire a billionaire. Shares surged as much as 235% after Circle and some of its shareholders raised nearly $1.1 billion in an initial public offering that was upsized twice amid heavy investor demand. The stock opened at $69.50, more than double its IPO price of $31, and climbed as high as $103.75. The offering included 34 million shares from Circle and other shareholders including Allaire, up from the 32 million shares announced earlier this week and 24 million initially. The IPO was priced well above its initial $24–$26 range and even its revised $27–$28. Based on Circle's 2 P.M. stock price of $86, Forbes figures Allaire has a net worth of at least $1.7 billion. BlackRock, already an investor, and Cathie Wood's ARK Investment Management, were among the reported buyers. The deal was led by JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, alongside 12 other underwriters. 'We're thrilled with the demand,' Circle CFO Jeremy Fox-Geen told Forbes. 'We saw a wide range of investor interest from traditional mutual fund complexes through to high-conviction, long-oriented pools of private capital within the broader hedge fund space, as well as various sovereign wealth funds. I think it says that the investor community is understanding that we are on the precipice of what we here call the new internet financial system.' Circle's listing arguably marks crypto's most significant public market event since Coinbase's 2021 IPO. The New York-based firm is a pure-play stablecoin business: USDC is the world's second-largest stablecoin, making up 27% of the market behind Tether's 67%. While originally used for crypto trading, stablecoins are increasingly drawing attention from financial giants and tech firms—among them Fidelity Investments, Bank of America and Meta—as rails for payments and cross-border transactions. Since launching USDC in 2018, Circle has processed over $25 trillion in transaction volume, nearly $6 trillion of which occurred in just the first quarter of 2025. The company has long positioned itself as the regulated, transparent alternative to Tether, publishing detailed reserve disclosures. In 2024, Circle reported $1.68 billion in revenue and $156 million in net income, up from $1.45 billion in revenue and $268 million in profit the year prior. But its business remains highly concentrated: More than 99% of revenue came from interest income on the cash and Treasurys backing USDC. In its S-1 filing, Circle warned that a 1% drop in interest rates could wipe out $441 million of that revenue. Fox-Geen says diversification is underway: 'We have a set of product investments which we have started monetizing recently, which range from subscription and services revenues, such as our blockchain network partnerships, through to transaction revenues, where we monetize certain of the flows across the network where users of the network wish to use a value added service which they're willing to pay for.' Those initiatives generated $20.7 million in Q1. Modest for now, but growing quickly, he noted. The company's distribution model, however, remains costly. In 2024, Circle paid over $1 billion in distribution fees—$900 million of it to Coinbase. Tether, by contrast, doesn't pay distributors to maintain dominance. The road to public markets was not a straight one. Circle scrapped a $9 billion SPAC merger in late 2022. In 2023, the company was hit by the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, where it had deposited a portion of its reserves. Though Circle ultimately recovered the funds, USDC's market capitalization took months to rebound. In April, Circle reportedly fielded acquisition offers from both Coinbase and Ripple valuing the company at around $5 billion. It opted instead to go public, filing confidentially for an IPO early this year. It's likely a bet that regulatory clarity will finally be arriving, and with it, a premium for compliance. 'Becoming public has always been part of our strategy,' said Fox-Geen. 'This is a multi decade transformation of the plumbing of the financial services industry, but that understates just how profound a technology upgrade this really is.'
Yahoo
40 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Palantir Shares Tumble 5% Despite CEO Pushes Back on Surveillance Allegations
June 5 - Shares of Palantir Technologies (NASDAQ:PLTR) fell more than 5% Thursday despite Chief Executive Alex Karp denied claims suggesting the company aided U.S. government surveillance of citizens under a prior administration. Speaking to CNBC, Karp said Palantir is "not surveilling Americans," pushing back against a New York Times report that said the firm may have been involved in compiling a broad database of U.S. citizens during Donald Trumps presidency. The Denver-based company issued a separate denial earlier this week on social platform X, calling the article blatantly untrue. Palantir said it does not gather data to unlawfully track Americans and emphasized its Foundry platform includes granular security measures. The New York Times story suggested Palantir may have been selected to help implement a Trump-era executive order aimed at merging data across federal agencies. The timing comes as Palantir continues to win U.S. government contracts. Karp, in the same interview, stressed the strategic importance of the U.S. leading in artificial intelligence development, adding that the West must adapt to stay competitive. Palantirs drop marks one of its sharpest single-day declines in recent weeks, with the stock hovering near one-month lows. This article first appeared on GuruFocus.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Why Winnebago (WGO) Shares Are Plunging Today
Shares of RV Manufacturer Winnebago (NYSE:WGO) fell 5.1% in the morning session after the company reported underwhelming preliminary first-quarter (fiscal Q3) 2025 results, with sales and EPS guidance below Wall Street's estimates. Management cited some of the issues faced during the quarter adding "What began as an encouraging selling season in March was hampered by growing macroeconomic uncertainty, resulting in worsening consumer sentiment and an increasingly cautious dealer network in the final two months of our fiscal third quarter." The stock market overreacts to news, and big price drops can present good opportunities to buy high-quality stocks. Is now the time to buy Winnebago? Access our full analysis report here, it's free. Winnebago's shares are quite volatile and have had 17 moves greater than 5% over the last year. In that context, today's move indicates the market considers this news meaningful but not something that would fundamentally change its perception of the business. The biggest move we wrote about over the last year was 8 months ago when the stock dropped 10.9% on the news that the company reported disappointing third-quarter earnings, with revenue, EPS, and adjusted EBITDA falling below Wall Street's estimate. Management highlighted various headwinds, including "uncertain retail conditions, higher inventory carrying costs, and slightly elevated inventories in the motorhome segment, leading to continued dealer hesitancy and increased promotional efforts." Similarly, revenue and EPS guidance for FY'2025 fell below consensus estimates. Overall, it was a weaker quarter for the company. Winnebago is down 31.7% since the beginning of the year, and at $32.87 per share, it is trading 49.5% below its 52-week high of $65.10 from November 2024. Investors who bought $1,000 worth of Winnebago's shares 5 years ago would now be looking at an investment worth $505.07. Unless you've been living under a rock, it should be obvious by now that generative AI is going to have a huge impact on how large corporations do business. While Nvidia and AMD are trading close to all-time highs, we prefer a lesser-known (but still profitable) semiconductor stock benefiting from the rise of AI. Click here to access our free report on our favorite semiconductor growth story. Sign in to access your portfolio
