President Donald Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia — headlined by a splashy $600 billion investment portfolio announcement — offered another reminder of Big Tech’s increasing role on a global stage once dominated by oil and gas.
The first day of Trump’s trip was highlighted by a Saudi-U.S. Investment Forum in Riyadh, which brought together officials from the energy, tech and finance community. Despite taking place in the petrostate and with the cooperation of a U.S. government that has lent its support to fossil fuel power, the focus of the forum was on economic diversification.
The speaker list at the investment forum was stacked with names that might be more at home in Silicon Valley. Tesla CEO and White House adviser Elon Musk spoke, as did executives from Amazon, Google, Qualcomm, chipmaker Nvidia and IBM. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is also joining the president on the trip, as are Energy Secretary Chris Wright and White House AI and crypto czar David Sacks.
And much of the focus was on artificial intelligence and the energy needed to fuel data centers to support the tech industry — even from the oil giants themselves.
