American business titans greet Trump in Saudi Arabia
When President Donald Trump, flanked by Arabian horses, entered the Saudi Arabian Royal Court for an opulent state visit on Tuesday, he was met by an entourage of American business leaders representing a strikingly high-profile cross-section of the economy.
Dozens of CEOs of the world's largest banks, hedge funds, defense contractors, tech firms and energy companies flew thousands of miles to Riyadh, where they descended on a lavish lunch with the president and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Elon Musk was there, as was his restaurateur brother, Kimbal. So were the CEOs of Google, OpenAI, NVIDIA, Uber, Blackrock, Blackstone and dozens of other moguls representing Fortune 500 companies or their own family offices.
It was an unusually large, and unusually VIP, cadre of guests for a presidential foreign trip — the latest instance in which the American elite, once reproachful of Trump, has swiftly moved to impress him.
'It is emblematic of both how foreign governments try to lobby this president because of his business interests in their countries, and how the private sector has bent the knee,' said Donald Sherman, executive director and chief counsel at the Citizens for Responsibility in Washington, a watchdog group that is suing the Trump administration.
The nearly three dozen business leaders were invited by the Saudi government, according to two White House officials and two other people close to the administration, all granted anonymity to discuss logistics, showing the extent to which a foreign government is trying to curry favor with the American president. Trump and his advisers have said expanding American business would be the primary goal of his first major foreign trip. And the kingdom, which has invested billions of dollars in Trump's family businesses, were eager to help him make good on that vow.
'There's no better place to make a future, or make a fortune, or do anything, frankly, than what we have in the United States of America under a certain President Donald J. Trump,' Trump said during an investment forum that served as the most high-profile visit of the day.
In Riyadh, the president signed an agreement with the Saudis to invest $600 billion in the United States and with U.S.-based companies, including a $142 billion pact to supply the kingdom weapons and other military equipment from over a dozen American defense firms.
'Investment increased by 22 percent in President Trump's first quarter because business leaders around the world want to participate in the new Golden Age of America,' White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly said in a statement to POLITICO. 'The President was proud to celebrate the ever-growing partnership between the United States and Saudi Arabia and a Middle East built on commerce, not chaos.'
The guest list included representatives from several companies that donated millions of dollars to Trump's record-breaking inaugural committee, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, both of whom gave $1 million personally and $1 million through their companies. Also in attendance was Patrick Soon-Shiong, the biotech billionaire and owner of the Los Angeles Times, who reportedly instructed the paper's liberal editorial board not to make a presidential endorsement in the 2024 election. And Musk, a top White House adviser given broad powers to slash federal spending as his companies' regulatory issues fall away, got to bring his brother as well as two 'escorts,' including Antonio Gracias, a fellow billionaire and DOGE member now embedded in the Social Security Administration. A DOGE spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
Earlier this week, in response to questions about Trump's business interests in the Middle Eastern countries where he is making the first multi-day foreign trip of his second term, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters it would be 'ridiculous to suggest that President Trump is doing anything for his own benefit' and that 'this White House holds ourselves to the highest of ethical standards.'
Later in the week, Trump said he plans to accept a jetliner, valued around $400 million, from the Qatari royal family for use as Air Force One that would be donated to his presidential library after the end of his term. He called it 'a great gesture from Qatar' and suggested it would be 'stupid' not to take it.
Many of the Wall Street heavyweights in attendance in Riyadh, including BlackRock founder Larry Fink and Blackstone Group's Stephen Schwarzman, have counted on Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund as a client and investor for years. Riyadh has emerged as a major investment hub over the last decade and top financiers have been flocking to the region to raise investment capital and source new deals. Several CEOs in Riyadh for the summit had also been speakers at last year's Future Investment Initiative conference, which is sponsored by a nonprofit that's overseen by Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund.
'These are all people who do big business in [Saudi Arabia],' said a person who has worked with the Saudis, granted anonymity to discuss their business dealings. The business leaders 'travel regularly to kiss [Bin Salman's] ring,' the person added.
The Saudi embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
At least one invitee, LinkedIn co-founder and major Democratic donor Reid Hoffman, didn't make the trip. The White House listed Hoffman as attending, but his chief of staff quickly went to social media to correct the record.
But other attendees appeared to have vested interests in an audience with the president.
One surprising participant was Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, who briefly ran for the Republican nomination for president and will be term-limited out of his job as mayor in November. He has expressed interest in becoming U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, three people with ties to Miami politics told POLITICO. The people were granted anonymity to relay private conversations.
The job of Miami mayor is considered to be part time. Suarez also works as a lawyer for the firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, which has an office in Riyadh. As mayor, he helped bring the Saudi sovereign wealth fund's Future Investment Initiative to Miami and spoke at the trade conference in February. Suarez spokesperson Ana Isabel Hume said the mayor's public and private sector roles 'together expand his reach and impact' and that expenses for the trip didn't come from the city of Miami.
The White House did not directly answer a question about whether Suarez was in the mix for the job or who invited him to the luncheon in Riyadh.
The tech delegation in Riyadh leaned heavily toward AI companies, cloud providers and chipmakers — a sector of the industry that has come to see the Middle East as a rich source of both investment cash and customers.
The trip was accompanied by a flurry of business announcements, many tied to Saudi state-controlled investment funds and companies. Google, Oracle, Salesforce, AMD and Uber pledged $80 billion toward joint tech investments. Google and the Saudi sovereign wealth fund announced more details about a planned AI Hub aimed at accelerating AI adoption across key industries in the kingdom. American chipmaking giant Nvidia said it would build 'AI factories of the future' in the kingdom. And a slate of companies, including NVIDIA, Qualcomm, AMD and AWS announced strategic partnerships with the new Saudi AI firm Humain, backed by Bin Salman.
Kimberly Leonard, Felicia Schwartz, Christine Mui, Mohar Chatterjee, Sam Sutton, Dasha Burns, Jake Traylor and Ali Bianco contributed to this report.
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