Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of SpaceX and Tesla, along with Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang, have agreed to collaborate on a major project in Saudi Arabia. The partnership was announced in conjunction with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s visit to the United States—his first in several years.

During the event, Musk revealed that xAI, his artificial intelligence company, will build a massive data center in Saudi Arabia in partnership with Humain, an AI firm backed by the Saudi government. The 500-megawatt facility will become xAI’s first large-scale data center outside the United States.

The collaboration also includes the deployment of xAI’s chatbot, Grok, across Saudi Arabia.

“The future of artificial intelligence will be built on efficient large-scale computing and the most advanced AI models,” Musk said in his statement, as reported by CNN on Wednesday (Nov 19).

The data center will rely on Nvidia chips. Huang, Nvidia’s CEO, appeared on the same panel as Musk alongside Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Communications and Information Technology, Abdullah Alswaha.

Musk is currently the richest person in the world, with a net worth of US$467.8 billion, equivalent to Rp7,824 trillion.

Meanwhile, Huang has become a prominent global figure amid the explosive rise of AI technologies. His net worth is now estimated at US$162 billion, or around Rp2,700 trillion.

Bloomberg reported that the U.S. is preparing to approve the first sale of advanced AI chips to Humain.

During the same event, Alswaha also announced plans to develop a 100-megawatt data center for Amazon Web Services (AWS), with a long-term goal of reaching one gigawatt of capacity. This project will also rely on Nvidia’s infrastructure.

As AI rapidly evolves, massive data centers require extensive physical space and significant energy resources. Many such facilities are currently under construction in the United States.

However, concerns have emerged that China may gain an advantage in energy production to support AI computing. For this reason, Saudi Arabia is seen as a potential balancing force, given its vast land area and access to low-cost energy suitable for large-scale projects.

During his visit to the White House on Wednesday (Nov 19), the crown prince stated that his country plans to invest US$1 trillion in the United States—a major increase from the previously announced US$600 billion in May.

The announcement even surprised U.S. President Donald Trump, though the exact timeline of the investment remains unclear.

“So you’re telling me now that the US$600 billion is going to be US$1 trillion? Good. I like that very much,” Trump told the crown prince in the Oval Office.