From Nvidia chips to Amazon’s AI zone, these are the key deals struck during Trump’s tour of Saudi Arabia

Donald Trump’s Middle East trip had been billed as a dealmaking opportunity — and it’s been living up to that expectation.

The president’s first major overseas tour of his second term has begun with the flow of billions of dollars as US companies have lined up to announce deals with Middle Eastern nations.

A flurry of announcements came out of the Saudi-US Investment Forum held in Riyadh on Tuesday, where deal after deal emerged.

In January, Trump announced that Saudi Arabia had committed to investing $600 billion in the US over the next four years, a sign that both countries were seeking to build closer ties.

Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader and crown prince, has made it a priority for his country to diversify its economy away from oil as part of his grand economic plan, Vision 2030.

It’s why he has been busy courting business leaders in the US, with the likes of Elon Musk, OpenAI boss Sam Altman, and BlackRock’s Larry Fink all in attendance at the investment forum on Tuesday.

Here’s a look at some of the major deals that have been announced during Trump’s visit so far.

An arms deal worth $142 billion

The US and Saudi Arabia struck an arms deal worth nearly $142 billion on the first day of Trump’s trip to the Middle East. The White House described it as the “largest defense sales agreement in history.”

The deal would see the US provide Saudi Arabia with “state-of-the-art warfighting equipment and services from over a dozen U.S. defense firms,” according to the White House.

The services will offer Saudi Arabia defense coverage that includes air force advancement and space capabilities, air and missile defense, maritime and coastal security, border security and information and communication systems upgrades, Trump’s administration added.

Nvidia brings chips to Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia’s grand plans to become a regional leader in AI depend on its access to highly advanced chips to train and run leading models. That’s where Nvidia comes in.

The US chipmaker is set to bring at least 18,000 of its Blackwell GPUs to Saudi Arabia as part of an initial deployment phase involving Humain, a new AI subsidiary established by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.

Humain’s aim is to build so-called AI factories to fulfil its ambitions, with plans to make use of “several hundred thousand of Nvidia’s most advanced GPUs” over the next five years.

A top Nvidia rival is building Saudi ties, too

AMD, one of the top rivals to Nvidia, has not let down the opportunity to build close ties with Saudi Arabia, either.

On Tuesday, the company announced it will work with Humain to invest up to $10 billion in AI compute over the next five years.

According to the company, the infrastructure built will involve “a network of AMD-based AI computing centers stretching from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to the United States.”

Amazon is building an ‘AI Zone’

Amazon Web Services is getting in on the action too, with a more than $5 billion plan to build what it calls an “AI Zone” in Saudi Arabia.

According to the company, the “first-of-a-kind” area will provide a space in which a vastly complex set of infrastructure including servers loaded with chips aimed at delivering “faster AI training and inference.”

It follows an announcement last year in which AWS said it would bring data centers to the country in 2026 and invest more than $5.3 billion.

Google is eyeing Saudi Arabia’s AI startups

Betting on startup talent is a big priority for Saudi venture capital firm STV. It’s about to get a helping hand in that process from Google, which is backing STV’s $100 million AI investment fund.

The fund will invest in companies in the Middle East and North Africa, or MENA.

“Our backing of STV’s AI Fund represents a strong commitment to supporting the AI ecosystem in MENA, building on our broader efforts to provide access to the opportunity behind AI for everyone,” Google said in a blog post on Tuesday.

Supermicro’s $20 billion data deal

California-based tech firm Supermicro might not have the same heft as the Big Tech firms surrounding it in Silicon Valley, but the company is showing it can play a strategic role in forging deep ties with Saudi Arabia.

This week, the company, which specializes in developing servers, signed a multi-year partnership worth $20 billion with DataVolt, a Saudi data center company founded in 2023.

The deal involves operations and manufacturing taking place in both Saudi Arabia and the US.

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