Who Are The Biggest Winners Of Trump's Middle East Trip?

During President Trump's visit to the Gulf region this week, many of the accompanying U.S. business representatives hailed from the tech industry, highlighting a new trend in American business investment: technology has become the new "fuel" driving economic development.

So far, nearly thirty U.S. tech leaders visiting the Middle East have signed agreements worth a cumulative $600 billion, covering fields such as AI chips, aircraft, and communications.

Among the deals, Nvidia has committed to supplying hundreds of thousands of its latest Blackwell chips to Humain, a newly established company under Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund PIF. Its competitor AMD announced a $10 billion partnership with Humain.

Additionally, Qatar Airways revealed an agreement with Boeing to purchase 210 aircraft from the company, totaling approximately $96 billion. Tesla CEO Elon Musk stated that Saudi Arabia is set to approve the deployment of the company's satellite internet service, Starlink, in the country.

These agreements underscore a shift in the U.S. leveraging its technological influence as a diplomatic tool, which will also help Trump forge closer ties with Gulf nations, particularly Saudi Arabia.

As part of its "Vision 2030" plan, Saudi Arabia has been seeking new economic growth drivers beyond its traditional oil industry, with artificial intelligence being a key focus of its investments. This has provided Trump with a significant opportunity to facilitate Silicon Valley's entry into the Middle Eastern market.

However, not every U.S. tech giant was on the list of attendees for this trip. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who attended Trump's inauguration, was absent from the president's first Middle East visit, and no other Meta executives were present either.

Additionally, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and President Brad Smith, who typically handles political affairs, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Apple CEO Tim Cook did not make the trip. Among the chipmakers that secured deals with Middle Eastern companies, Intel, a representative U.S. firm, was notably absent.

It is worth noting that some companies not on this trip, though also deeply involved in AI, have faced repeated market skepticism about their capabilities- Apple being one example. In contrast, executives accompanying Trump to the Middle East, such as those from Nvidia, AMD, OpenAI, and Musk, whose xAI owns AI startups, are regarded as leaders in the AI field.

This arrangement may simply be a coincidence, but it could also hint at the current development landscape of the U.S. AI industry and provide some direction for future resource allocation, especially in the next four years of a Trump administration.