Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Fink slated for Saudi conference
Donald Trump and top US corporates including Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are headed to Saudi Arabia to meet with the oil-rich kingdom’s leaders.
World
Don't miss out on the headlines from World. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Top US corporate titans including Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Fink are heading to Saudi Arabia next week for an investor conference, as President Trump himself flies to the oil-rich kingdom to meet with regional heads of state, The New York Post reports.
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 tsar 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 event 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 defence, AI, tech and healthcare co-operation worth at least US$600 billion — a goal set by MBS on January 23 in Mr Trump’s first call with a foreign leader after winning a second term in the White House.
A leaked invitation obtained by The Post says the forum will “provide an exclusive opportunity to deepen engagement, unlock new investment avenues, and reaffirm our longstanding economic partnership.”
Many firms slated to attend the Saudi-US Investment Forum also regularly attend Riyadh’s annual flagship financial gathering, 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 US$2 billion investment from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund for his Affinity Partners firm, six months after Mr 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 trip came one day after the Pentagon announced the State Department’s approval of a potential US$3.5 billion sale of AIM-120C-8 advanced medium-range air-to-air missiles to Saudi Arabia, which will be built in Tucson, Arizona.
The proposed sale now goes to Congress. Politicians 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 US.
Authorities in Riyadh have denied any involvement.
FOLLOW UPDATES BELOW:
TOP COURT ALLOWS TRUMP’S TRANS BAN TO TAKE EFFECT
A divided US Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed President Donald Trump’s ban on transgender military personnel to take effect while litigation proceeds, putting thousands of troops at risk of dismissal.
The decision, which the court’s three liberal justices opposed, stayed a preliminary injunction by a lower court that had blocked the implementation of the ban as legal challenges play out.
The ruling is a significant victory for President Trump, who has made rolling back transgender rights a major part of his second term in office, and has railed against judges who have blocked parts of his agenda.
TRUMP SAYS HE WILL STOP BOMBING YEMEN’S HOUTHIS
President Trump claimed that Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen have “capitulated,”agreeing to stop attacking American vessels in the Red Sea and that his administration will cease strikes on them in response.
“We had some very good news last night, the Houthis have announced … to us that they don’t want to fight anymore,” Mr Trump told reporters in the Oval Office while meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.
“They just don’t want to fight. And we will honour that, and we will stop the bombings, and they have capitulated, but more importantly, we will take their word [when] they say they will not be blowing up ships anymore.”
There was no immediate confirmation of the comments by Mr Trump, who called the development “very positive” and added that “we just found out about that.”
It is also not entirely clear whether the Houthis’ purported halt on vessel strikes is limited to American ships specifically.
The Red Sea is a major trade and oil transit route that benefits US allies in Europe and Asia, and hundreds of vessels pass through it each day.
“These are a band of individuals with advanced weaponry that were threatening global shipping,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said after Mr Trump’s announcement. “And the job was to get that to stop.”
‘VERY BIG ANNOUNCEMENT’ TO COME AHEAD OF TRUMP’S MIDEST TRIP
US President Donald Trump on Tuesday teased that he will make a major announcement ahead of his trip next week to the Middle East, without revealing what it would be.
“We’re going to have a very, very big announcement to make. Like, as big as it gets, and I won’t tell you on what. And it’s very positive,” Mr Trump said in the Oval Office.
“It’ll be one of the most important announcements that have been made in years about a certain subject,” Mr Trump said, without offering further clues.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who was opening a meeting with President Trump, responded drily: “I’m on the edge of my seat.”
Mr Trump heads next week to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates on the first foreign trip of his second term other than a brief stop in Rome for the funeral of Pope Francis.
Diplomats say that the United States is hoping for progress ahead of Mr Trump’s trip on Gaza, where Israel has cut off shipments of food and other supplies for two months as it unleashes a renewed assault.
TRUMP ENCOURAGES MIGRANTS TO ‘SELF-DEPORT’ FOR $1000
The Trump administration has started paying illegal migrants to US$1,000 each to “self-deport” from the US, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said it will save taxpayers up to US$1 million per family.
Immigrants can avoid arrest by federal immigration agents if they choose to use the Trump administration’s CBP Home app.
The DHS will pay for commercial flights out of the US, and then send cash once they confirm they’ve left.
Despite shelling out the cash, DHS projects that taxpayers will save 70 per cent over the cost of rounding up and deporting each illegal migrant.
It costs American taxpayers an average of US$17,121 for federal officials to arrest, detain and deport a single illegal immigrant, according to DHS.
I will continue fighting every day alongside President Donald Trump to secure our border and keep American communities safe. This is just the beginning of the Golden Age of America.https://t.co/6P4shHFdGW
— Secretary Kristi Noem (@Sec_Noem) April 30, 2025
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said that “self-deportation is the best, safest and most cost-effective way” for illegal immigrants to avoid arrest by ICE.
“Download the CBP Home App TODAY and self-deport,” said Rep. Noem.
‘AFRAID OF THE CARTELS’: TRUMP SLAMS MEXICO LEADER
President Trump confirmed over the weekend that he volunteered to dispatch US troops to Mexico to combat brutal drug cartels, only to be rebuffed by his counterpart, Claudia Sheinbaum.
Sheinbaum, 62, had publicly claimed that she turned down an offer from Mr Trump to send American soldiers into her country to assist in efforts to crack down on the deadly drug gangs.
“It’s true,” Mr Trump, 78, told reporters aboard Air Force One Sunday night while en route to Washington from Florida.
“They [the cartels] are horrible people that have been killing people left and right ... they’ve made a fortune on selling drugs and destroying our people.”
“They are bad news,” he added. “If Mexico wanted help with the cartels, we would be honoured to go in and do it. I told her that. I would be honoured to go in and do it. The cartels are trying to destroy our country. They’re evil.”
The US saw at least 87,000 drug overdose deaths between October 2023 and September 2024, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
There were about 57,997 fentanyl-related deaths between September 2023 to August 2024, per the CDC.
Sheinbaum confirmed she had turned down Mr Trump’s offer to assist with the cartel crisis while speaking at a university in Mexico.
“And do you know what I told him? No, President Trump,” Sheinbaum recounted. “The territory cannot be violated. Sovereignty cannot be sold. Sovereignty is cherished and defended.”
“It’s not necessary. We can collaborate. We can work together,” Sheinbaum went on. “We can share information, but we will never accept the presence of the United States’ army in our territory.”
TRUMP TO BAN RISKY RESEARCH THAT ‘LED TO PANDEMIC’
President Trump will sign an executive order Monday to ban all federal funding of risky gain-of-function research in China, Iran and other countries without proper oversight of the experiments — more than five years after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic that US intel agencies have since said most likely resulted from a lab accident.
The order will yank funding from “any present and all future” gain-of-function research as well as deputise the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other agencies to identify biological research harmful to public health or threatening to national security.
“These measures will drastically reduce the potential for lab-related incidents involving gain-of-function research, like that conducted on bat coronaviruses in China by the EcoHealth Alliance and Wuhan Institute of Virology,” according to a White House fact sheet reviewed by The Post.
All research with infectious pathogens and toxins will be paused until the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy and national security adviser develop a new policy with enforcement and reporting requirements.
- With the New York Post and AFP
More Coverage
Originally published as Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Fink slated for Saudi conference