In a spacious hall at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., dozens of senior executives from major Saudi and American companies gathered for an unprecedented investment conference. The room brought together leaders of major energy, technology, and financial firms—from Chevron and Qualcomm to Cisco and Pfizer—along with executives from IBM, Google, Salesforce, Boeing, Aramco, and others. “I’m excited, impressed—and a little jealous. What I like about Saudi Arabia is that it’s trying to improve the present and build the future at the same time. That’s a balance we don’t often see elsewhere,” Ignacio Garcia, CEO of Arthur D. Little—one of the world’s oldest management consulting firms—told MBN.
Pledged One Trillion Dollars and a “Marshall Plan”
This gathering took place during Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s visit to the United States this week, following a lavish welcome ceremony at the White House. The young prince announced the Kingdom’s intention to increase its investments in the United States to one trillion dollars, up from a previous pledge of $600 billion. “It is very difficult to find another investor at this scale. In my view, we are witnessing one of the largest investment movements of this century,” Garcia said.
“About 95 percent of Saudi Arabia’s new investments lie outside the oil sector,” said Ahmed Al-Yemeni, CEO of Takamol Holding, who came from Riyadh to sign several agreements with American companies. “Everything we see now is investment pulling us away from oil. Oil and gas remain important economic drivers, but what is being built today is deep diversification across all different sectors, far from primary resources,” Al-Yemeni added. At the same investment conference, applause broke out as agreements and deals worth $270 billion were announced between dozens of Saudi and American companies.
Facing these astronomical figures, Ignacio Garcia didn’t hesitate to liken what is happening to a new “Marshall Plan.” “What we’re seeing today is a new Marshall Plan,” he told MBN—except this time, the direction is reversed: Saudi Arabia is injecting massive investments into the U.S. economy, akin to how the U.S. helped rebuild Europe after World War II. Perhaps more important than the size of these investments is their nature. The focus is squarely on future-oriented sectors far removed from oil. “The conversation about oil didn’t exceed 5 to 10 percent,” Al-Yemeni noted.
The Big Deals: Artificial Intelligence
Details of the announced deals during the visit show that the advanced technology sector is the biggest winner from the Saudi investment wave. At the top of the list, HUMAIN—a Saudi AI startup backed by the Public Investment Fund—announced plans to buy 600,000 advanced AI chips from the U.S. company Nvidia. This represents one of the largest purchase orders in Nvidia’s history and translates directly into billions of dollars in sales for the booming American semiconductor industry. AMD and the Saudi company HUMAIN also unveiled an ambitious $10 billion partnership to supply Saudi Arabia with advanced AI computer chips and to develop computing capabilities over the next five years.
Under this partnership, AMD and Cisco will serve as exclusive technology partners to HUMAIN—giving the two American giants a major role in designing and operating the high-capacity data centers and supercomputing systems Saudi Arabia plans to build. The partnership is expected to contribute 500 megawatts of AI computing capacity over five years, paving the way toward a joint goal of building 1 gigawatt of AI infrastructure by 2030. “Most of these agreements truly create opportunities to transfer capabilities, and all of them generate very significant long-term value,” Al-Yemeni told MBN. Other notable examples include a Saudi-funded plan to build a massive AI data center in the United States. HUMAIN announced a strategic partnership with Global AI to establish a high-density data center in America.
Supporting American innovation, HUMAIN also led a major $900 million funding round for Luma AI, a U.S. company specializing in AI-generated video. The visit also saw cooperation on Arabic AI content. Adobe and Qualcomm announced they would collaborate with HUMAIN to develop Arabic digital content using the Saudi large language model “Allam.” Amazon Web Services (AWS) meanwhile announced plans to install up to 150,000 AI accelerators in collaboration with HUMAIN in a special “AI Zone” in Riyadh.
Chips and Semiconductors
The semiconductor sector stands out as one of the most sensitive and important areas of cooperation during the Crown Prince’s visit to Washington. According to Reuters, the U.S. Department of Commerce authorized the export of up to 35,000 advanced Blackwell-class chips from Nvidia to Saudi Arabia’s HUMAIN—valued at around $1 billion. This represents one of the largest export licenses ever granted by the United States for advanced AI chips to any foreign partner. Although no Saudi-funded semiconductor fabrication plants in the U.S. were announced during the visit, the signals of Saudi interest in this critical field are clear. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman noted that the Kingdom expects to spend $50 billion on chips soon—whether through investments in semiconductor companies or through large purchases of advanced technologies.
The Saudi Public Investment Fund has already shown a growing appetite for exposure to U.S. chip companies, recently increasing its holdings in firms such as ARM, which designs processor cores. “These are not projects built overnight. They need years before their value shows—on the economy, on technology, on infrastructure, and on human and informational systems,” Al-Yemeni told MBN.
Will the Trillion-Dollar Plan Be Achieved?
Still, the scene is not without challenges and question marks. Some economists have questioned Saudi Arabia’s ability to fulfill the trillion-dollar pledge given its substantial domestic financial commitments. Some pointed out that the Kingdom is currently running a budget deficit and remains financially dependent on oil prices, which have recently dipped. Riyadh also has major spending obligations tied to its internal transformation projects—such as the city of NEOM and other large-scale Vision 2030 initiatives—which require hundreds of billions of dollars and face challenges related to costs and timelines.
Ezat Wagdi Ba Awaidhan
Ezat Wagdi Ba Awaidhan, a Yemeni journalist and documentary filmmaker based in Washington, D.C., holds a master's degree in media studies.
