Elon Musk joins Trump on Saudi trip - VIDEO
Dozens of business leaders from some of America’s largest corporations are in Riyadh, joining President Donald Trump and senior U.S. and Saudi officials for a high-profile lunch on Tuesday.
The executives — from tech firms, banks, consumer groups and other industries, including representatives of four of the 10 biggest U.S. companies by market value — may be there to pitch for business from deep-pocketed Saudi investors, businesses and government departments, News.Az reports, citing The New York Times.
Their companies are also dealing with the tariffs imposed by Mr. Trump on U.S. trading partners, so the trip is an opportunity to lobby top Trump officials, such as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, on trade policy.
Saudi Arabia has emerged as one of the world’s largest investors in artificial intelligence, an effort to diversify the oil-rich nation’s economy and give it influence over one of the hottest sectors in the business world. Notable A.I. players at the lunch include Sam Altman, the chief executive of ChatGPT parent OpenAI; Jensen Huang, the leader of the advanced chipmaker Nvidia; Ruth Porat, the chief investment officer of Alphabet, Google’s parent company; and Andy Jassy, the chief of Amazon, which is a major provider of cloud-computing services.
There is also Elon Musk, who, in addition to overseeing Mr. Trump’s effort to slash the size of the federal government, also runs Tesla, SpaceX and his own A.I. company called xAI, which is in talks for new financing that could value the firm at as much as $120 billion.
The vast sums of money that Saudi Arabia is spending on technology, infrastructure and other priorities have made the country a popular destination for financial executives seeking to advise the kingdom and its companies. Top financial leaders at the lunch include Stephen Schwarzman of Blackstone, Larry Fink of BlackRock and Jane Fraser of Citigroup.
Here are some of the business executives and other guests at the lunch, according to a list provided by the White House:
Elon Musk, chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX
Stephen A. Schwarzman, chief executive of the Blackstone Group
Larry Fink, chief executive of BlackRock
Arvind Krishna, chairman and chief executive of IBM
Jane Fraser, chief executive of Citigroup
Kelly Ortberg, chief executive of Boeing
Ruth Porat, chief investment officer of Google
Andy Jassy, chief executive of Amazon
Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI
Jensen Huang, chief executive of Nvidia
Alex Karp, chief executive of Palantir
Jeff Miller, chief executive of Halliburton
Travis Kalanick, former chief executive of Uber and founder of Cloud Kitchens
Kathy Warden, chief executive of Northrop Grumman
James Quincey, chief executive of Coca-Cola
Dara Khosrowshahi, chief executive of Uber
Francis Suarez, mayor of Miami
Reid Hoffman, executive chairman of LinkedIn
Gianni Infantino, president of FIFA
Patrick Soon-Shiong, executive chairman of Immunity Bio and owner of The Los Angeles Times
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