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Top US corporate titans including Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Fink are heading to Saudi Arabia next week for an investor conference — even as President Trump himself flies to the oil-rich kingdom to meet with regional heads of state, The Post has learned.
The Saudi-US Investment Forum — which one insider branded “MAGA in the Desert” — will be held on May 13. Other guests will include OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser, Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg and David Sacks, the White House czar for AI and crypto.
Government officials set to beat the drum for investing in the US include Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, sources told The Post.
“This is going to be MAGA in the desert. It is ultimately about creating jobs in the US,” said one source, who speculated that the value of the money-spinning investment contracts could be even higher than that sum.
Other business bigwigs including ex-Google financial chief Ruth Porat, Palantir CEO Alex Karp and PIMCO’s Emmanuel Roman will take part in panels and roundtable discussions, but the president himself is not currently set to appear at the event.
The corporate shindig will take place a day before Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman, also known as “MBS,” chairs a summit featuring the US and the leaders of the so-called Gulf Cooperation Council: the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, and Qatar.
The plan for the conference is to ink agreements on everything from defense, AI, tech and healthcare cooperation worth at least $600 billion — a goal set by MBS on Jan. 23 in Trump’s first call with a foreign leader after winning a second term in the White House.
A leaked invitation for the financial confab, obtained by The Post, says the forum will “provide an exclusive opportunity to deepen engagement, unlock new investment avenues, and reaffirm our long-standing economic partnership.”
Many firms slated to attend the Saudi-US Investment Forum also regularly attend Riyadh’s annual flagship financial bash, the Future Investment Initiative.
Former White House adviser and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, who built a close relationship with MBS during negotiations over the Abraham Accords, reportedly received a $2 billion investment from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund for his Affinity Partners firm, six months after Trump first left office.
The trip to the Gulf kingdom is part of the president’s whistlestop tour of the Middle East next week, where the president is also set to visit Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
News of the foreign jaunt was first reported by the Axios website on Saturday.
The Axios report came one day after the Pentagon announced the State Department’s approval of a potential $3.5 billion sale of AIM-120C-8 advanced medium-range air-to-air missiles to Saudi Arabia, which will be built in Tuczon, Arizona.
The proposed sale now goes to Congress. Lawmakers typically weigh in on such sales and, in some cases, can block them.
The kingdom already relies heavily on America’s military might. The Royal Saudi Air Force has the world’s second-largest fleet of F-15 fighter jets after the U.S.
Trump’s 2017 trip to the country upended a tradition of modern US presidents typically first heading to Canada, Mexico or the United Kingdom for their first trip abroad.
It also underscored his administration’s close ties to the rulers of the oil-rich Gulf states as his eponymous real estate company has pursued deals across the region.
Relations were more strained under the Joe Biden administration after the CIA released a report in 2021 that accused MBS of ordering the assassination of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018.
Authorities in Riyadh have denied any involvement.
English (US)