President Donald Trump on Wednesday praised “groundbreaking” agreements with Saudi Arabia on AI, civil nuclear energy and critical minerals and said his top officials are fast-tracking permitting for fossil fuels to feed the coming data center boom.
Speaking at the U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum in Washington, Trump applauded Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia for vowing Tuesday to invest up to $1 trillion in the U.S. and said more than $270 billion in agreements and sales between dozens of private companies are moving forward.
“Under the deals being signed this week, the world’s two leading energy superpowers, America and Saudi Arabia, are partnering on energy like we’ve never partnered before,” said Trump.
While the White House offered few details about the deals, MP Materials, which owns the only operating rare earths mine in the U.S., revealed Wednesday that it’s partnering with the Department of Defense to finance a 49 percent equity stake in a new rare earths refinery in Saudi Arabia.
And Trump during his speech said his administration is paving the way for construction of the “largest, most powerful, most innovative AI ecosystem” in the world with a “one-approval process” as opposed to having to go through 50 states.
Trump said executives in the AI sector recently shared concerns with him about powering their multibillion-dollar operations and that he responded by assuring them they would be approved to build power generation within two to three weeks as opposed to waiting years for rejection.
“I told you last week … I’m giving you approval to build your own plant, and you will be approved within a period of two weeks,” Trump recalled, adding that he then directed EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin to fast-track infrastructure for data centers.
“In fact, Lee Zeldin, one of the superstars of this administration, I said, ‘Lee, if it’s oil and gas, get them approved in two weeks,’” said Trump.
“If it’s nuclear, add another week, because some are going ‘nuclear,’ and … they better be careful,” he continued. “But they are going to be careful, they’re the greatest people in the world, so now they come back, and they actually believed it, and now they’re being approved rapidly.”
Trump during the speech also called on Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to accelerate approval of oil and gas projects.
“Will you please drill a little bit faster?” said Trump, before applauding Energy Secretary Chris Wright. “They’re setting records, but I’ll never be satisfied.”
He also went on to blame “green new scams” on boosting inflation and undercut climate science before blasting wind energy.
“Windmills don’t work,” said Trump. “What does work is natural gas, oil, nuclear and other things … but the windmills are a disaster.” Climate advocates have challenged Trump’s claims on renewables, saying administration rollbacks of federal support will lead to higher energy prices.
Trump also lauded his top brass for streamlining permits for all new energy projects, including mining, and wrapping up reviews within a month.
“Maximum is 28 days, that’s why we have so much under construction,” Trump said before pivoting back to power sources for AI data centers. “You’re building your own electric, you’re really becoming your own utility in addition to doing what you’re doing … your excess electricity, you can sell back to the federal grid.”
Amazon and Elon Musk
The president said billions of dollars of deals between companies in multiple industries are being signed Wednesday, including plans to build out AI infrastructure in the U.S. and Saudi Arabia.
The construction of data centers is being watched closely partly because of their contribution to rising electricity demand, which is putting a strain on the U.S. grid. The deals fortify the links between some of the world’s largest technology companies and the Middle Eastern kingdom, which is aiming to become a global AI leader.
Humain, a new artificial intelligence firm backed by the Saudi Arabian government, said it forged an agreement with Florida-based Global AI “to build large-scale AI data centers and compute capacity in the U.S. and globally,” although it did not unveil new U.S. projects or specify costs. The companies did not immediately respond to request for comment.
“Global AI is proud to play this pivotal role in supporting Saudi Arabia’s transformational AI goals while securely deploying U.S. technology investments,” said John Kelly, co-founder, chair and CTO of Global AI.
Humain also announced deals with Amazon, Cisco, Adobe and Elon Musk’s xAI, which said it plans to help build and operate massive data centers across the kingdom. Musk said the plan is a “first-of-its-kind partnership to deploy xAI’s [chatbot] Grok across an entire country.” Speaking at the forum, Musk cited initial development of a 500-megawatt data center project.
Luma AI, a California-based AI video startup, said it raised $900 million in funding with support from Humain, AMD, Amazon and investors Amplify Partners and Matrix Partners. Luma said it plans to be a customer of the 2-gigawatt Project Halo, one of the world’s largest AI projects being built in Saudi Arabia.
In comparison, 1 gigawatt is roughly equivalent to the amount of power used in all of San Francisco.
Amazon said it was teaming with Humain to build a data center “AI Zone” in Riyadh for worldwide customers and planned to train 100,000 Saudi citizens in cloud computing.
In another deal, AMD, Cisco and Humain said they were eyeing development of 1 gigawatt of AI infrastructure by 2030. Cisco spokesperson Robyn Blum said the announcements Wednesday are focused on Saudi Arabia, including a planned 100-megawatt project in the country.
The Trump administration has been pushing for AI development, including through a plan to build data centers at the national labs and support for Stargate, an initiative led by OpenAI and Oracle to invest at least $500 billion in AI and data centers at U.S. locations over four years.
