The Scoop
The UAE’s powerful national security adviser, Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed, will meet top US business leaders on his trip this week to Washington, DC, including billionaire tech figures Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and Larry Ellison, as well as Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, BlackRock’s Larry Fink, and Palantir’s Alex Karp, a person familiar with the trip’s planning said.
Sheikh Tahnoon arrives in Washington today with an agenda that includes regional security, amid a US assault on their shared Houthi adversaries in Yemen; energy investments; and access to sensitive US technology.
The Abu Dhabi firm G42 has four times more computing capacity in the US than in the UAE, while Nvidia’s cutting-edge chips power data centers in the emirates. Microsoft’s Brad Smith sits on G42’s board, following a $1.5 billion investment last year.
Sheikh Tahnoon is expected to meet top officials including Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, as well as US business figures, one person familiar with the planning said.
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The converging businesses of energy and AI have intensified the longstanding relationship between the US and the wealthy Gulf state, which long orbited investments and security.
The talks are also expected to focus on possible investments in the US by the Emirati energy investment firm XRG, which has been building its capacity in liquid natural gas and the specialty chemicals that help cool data centers — with an eye toward co-investing in large-scale US projects.
The top UAE energy official, Sultan Al Jaber, drew applause at an energy conference in Houston last week telling the crowd that it was time to “make energy great again,” and then handed out bracelets carrying the slogan.