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President Trump begins his four-day trip to the Middle East, landing in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday. Meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Trump signed several defense and economic agreements and facilitating access to sell semiconductors to Saudi Arabia.
Brad Smith and Madison Mills outline Trump's Cabinet members who are set to speak in Saudi Arabia and the tech CEOs who have followed the administration, including Tesla's (TSLA) Elon Musk and Nvidia's (NVDA) Jensen Huang.
To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Morning Brief here.
President Trump kicking off his first major international trip of his second term, starting in Saudi Arabia. This is a four-day trip to the Middle East with visits to Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. President Trump today signing several agreements with the Saudis, including on military cooperation. Focus of the trip is deal making between the nations, the first deal from the visit already emerging. The US will boost Saudi access to AI chips, buoying the region's ability to buy chips from the likes of Nvidia and AMD, despite the concerns that the Gulf nation could turn around and sell those chips to China.
Still, this is the kind of deal that's drawn dozens of tech CEOs to the business forum, including Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. The president meeting with the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, who previously announced $600 billion in investments into the US, and the Gulf state plans to announce deals with the United States involving AI, defense, energy, and space during the visit.
And the Crown Prince has been very focused on turning the kingdom into a global tech hub, a goal that's on display given the kinds of CEOs in the room for this visit. That laundry list of names also signaling to investors which sectors could be impacted by any deals coming out of meetings over the next few days. And a number of high-level US officials are also speaking at a Saudi US Investment forum, including Treasury Secretary Scott Besen, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and White House AI and Cryptozar David Sachs.
