Elon Musk Joins President Donald Trump On His Arabian Jaunt

Forbes

On Monday in Riyadh, at the Saudi-U.S. Investment Forum, Elon Musk announced during a fireside chat with the Kingdom’s minister of communications and information technology that Starlink, the satellite internet arm of his rocket company SpaceX, had clinched a deal with Saudi Arabia to offer service to the country’s maritime and aviation companies.  It was the second Musk venture to do a deal with the Saudis in as many weeks. On April 29, X Corp., Musk’s social media company, raised $1.23 billion in fresh debt to refinance part of its existing $12 billion debt load from Musk’s leveraged buyout three years ago. One of the firms helping to refinance X’s debt was Kingdom Holding Company, the investment firm chaired by Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Alsaud, according to PitchBook. It is not clear how much of the $1.23 billion was financed by Kingdom Holding. A spokesperson for Kingdom Holding declined to comment. X Corp. did not respond to a request for comment. The Saudi company’s involvement in the refinancing deal has not previously been reported on.  Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnhyatt/2025/05/14/musks-saudi-trip-caps-gulf-dealmaking-spree/  Subscribe to FORBES: https://www.youtube.com/user/Forbes?sub_confirmation=1  Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:  https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript  Stay Connected Forbes newsletters: https://newsletters.editorial.forbes.com Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes More From Forbes:  http://forbes.com  Forbes covers the intersection of entrepreneurship, wealth, technology, business and lifestyle with a focus on people and success.

Transcript

00:00Hi, everybody. I'm Brittany Lewis, a breaking news reporter here at Forbes. Joining me now

00:07is my Forbes colleague, staff writer, John Hyatt. John, thanks so much for joining me.

00:12Great to see you, Brittany. Thanks for having me.

00:14In his second term, President Trump is now on his first major foreign trip,

00:19and that is all over the Middle East. The major takeaway of this trip is that he's more focused

00:25on making deals rather than any type of foreign policy objective. And you're reporting that

00:30Elon Musk has a similar goal. He's there for a similar reason. At a lunch in Riyadh earlier this

00:35week, President Trump and Saudi officials were joined by top business leaders, including Elon

00:40Musk. So to start off the conversation, were you surprised to see Musk joining Trump on this

00:45Middle Eastern trip, at that lunch, making deals in dealmaking mode? What's your perspective here?

00:51I wasn't surprised at all. Elon Musk has been a central figure in the Trump administration

01:00since January when Trump took office. And although Musk has taken a bit of a step back in the last

01:08couple of weeks, as he's pledged to reduce his involvement in Doge and to get more involved at

01:14his companies, despite that, you know, this was a big sort of foreign policy push from Trump. And

01:22Elon Musk has a history of doing deals with the Saudis. And it was a big U.S. Saudi business conference

01:29with other CEOs and billionaire investors. So it was only natural that Elon would would be there

01:35making himself known.

01:37Can you talk to us a little bit about that timeline between Elon Musk and the Saudis? Because

01:42you're reporting he made a deal at this forum, but the relationship between both parties wasn't

01:50always as amicable. Walk us through it.

01:53Yeah. And as you mentioned, so Elon Musk did announce or rather the Saudi minister announced

01:59during a chat with Musk that Starlink, the satellite internet service run by SpaceX, would be coming to

02:06Saudi Arabia to provide internet service to the maritime and aviation industries there.

02:12Musk also hinted at robo driving Teslas coming to the kingdom soon. So perhaps more deals are on the

02:20horizon. But as you say, Musk's history with the Saudis goes back years now. It really dates back to

02:282018, 2018, when the Saudi Sovereign Investment Fund and the Sovereign Wealth Fund, PIF, started to

02:35build a stake in Musk's car company, Tesla. And they had built a stake of close to five percent of

02:42shares. So not enough that they had to disclose it, but it was widely reported on at the time.

02:48And whether or not it was true, Musk and the Saudis apparently were engaged in talks about the

02:54Saudis helping to take Musk, I'm sorry, helping to take Tesla private. This was something that Musk was

03:01interested in because there were a lot of short sellers of Tesla at the time, and he was really

03:04frustrated with some of the limitations of running a publicly traded company. And so Musk infamously

03:11tweeted out funding secured to take Tesla private at $420 a share. He later commented that the Saudis

03:19were behind that. The deal was not secured. The funding was not there. The deal unraveled if the deal

03:26was ever going to happen. The SEC sued Musk and Tesla. And ultimately, as part of Musk's settlement

03:34with the SEC, he had to step down his board chair. It was a big sort of event for Musk and Tesla.

03:41The Saudis later sold their stake. And Musk said that he probably wouldn't take money from the Saudis

03:48again, following the killing of the Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi. But all of that has

03:54changed in the last couple of years. The Saudis have become big investors in X and XAI. And it looks

04:02like there are more deals between Musk and the Saudis on the horizon. Why has that changed in the past

04:08couple of years? Because just a few years ago, Elon Musk said, I'll probably not take any Saudi

04:14investment. Obviously, that's changed considering the announcement this week. Why did both sides change

04:19their messaging on this? I think it suited the interests of both parties for Musk as he was as

04:29he's been building this kingdom of companies, these private firms like X, you know, Twitter, which he

04:37took private, his artificial intelligence startup, XAI. You know, he's needed to attract capital to help

04:44finance those businesses. And in addition to the venture capitalists in the US that he's capped for

04:50money, he has increasingly sought money from abroad. So not just the Saudis, but from other investors in

04:57the Middle East and across the globe, which we can talk about. And so, you know, for Musk, it's sort of a

05:03broader embrace of foreign capital and specifically Gulf capital for his companies. And for the Saudis,

05:10you know, we saw during the first Trump administration that the Saudis knew how to reach Donald

05:16Trump. They knew how to flatter Donald Trump and how to improve US-Saudi relations. And I think,

05:24you know, they saw what was happening with Musk, how he was drifting further rightward, how he was

05:29starting to embrace Republicans, as well as just the fact that, you know, Musk is such an important,

05:36pivotal figure, not just in US politics, but really in global politics, with Starlink, which operates

05:43internet around the world, with Tesla, one of the major EV companies in the world, and just as an

05:50increasingly influential voice on X. You know, the Saudis saw that Musk was an important person

05:57that they wanted to cultivate a relationship with and to repair that relationship. And so

06:03the sort of first step that they took was helping to finance his takeover of Twitter in 2022.

06:12And this was interesting because a Saudi billionaire, Prince al-Walid, who has close ties to,

06:18you know, the ruling family, Crown Prince MBS, he was already one of the larger minority shareholders

06:23in Twitter when it was a public company. And so when Musk took the company over, he could have

06:29sold his shares as part of that takeover. Instead, he rolled those publicly traded shares into the new

06:37entity, X, and remained one of the larger minority shareholders in that company. So helping to,

06:44helping Musk get the deal done, essentially. And then since then, the Saudis have backed through that

06:51same company, Kingdom Holding Company, run by billionaire Prince al-Walid. They've helped back XAI.

06:57Now, of course, Ax and XAI are part of the same company, XAI Holdings, and they are one of the

07:02larger minority investors in that firm. And so it has been striking to sort of see how, you know,

07:08initially they wanted to deal with Musk, then they fell out. But as Musk's wealth and power has

07:14continued to grow, the Saudis have said, OK, let's actually build a relationship with him. And we see

07:20that it's already been paying dividends.

07:22I now want to look throughout the Middle East, aside from Saudi Arabia. Qatar is also a country

07:29that made some headlines this week, with reporting that they are gifting President Trump and the

07:33administration a $400 million Air Force One airplane. What about the Qataris? Are they

07:39interested in Elon Musk and investing in any of his companies?

07:43Yeah, so similar to the Saudis, the Qataris also wanted to get on the Musk train. And it looks like the

07:50first did that in a big way with Musk's Twitter deal in 2022. The Qatari Sovereign Wealth Fund

07:58contributed $375 million towards that take private deal. So, you know, they got in Musk's good books

08:06with that deal. And then since then, they've invested money in XAI, helping Musk finance the

08:14construction of this AI startup. And they've also done some interesting deals with Musk as well.

08:22So not strictly investments, but partnerships. Qatar Airways, the state owned airway company,

08:28which is now, of course, under the spotlight, because as you pointed out, they're, you know,

08:32involved with President Trump with this big gift. And apparently they're now promising to buy a bunch

08:37of Boeing jets. Qatar Airways purchased, or I'm sorry, struck a deal with Starlink last October

08:45to basically introduce internet on all of Qatar Airways flights, which fair enough, I mean,

08:53United Airlines has also struck a deal with Starlink to do that. So there is real utility in Starlink

08:58internet. More curiously, in January, Qatar Sovereign Wealth Fund struck a deal with a little known

09:06drone light show company called Nova Sky Stories. The reason this is interesting is because Nova Sky

09:12Stories is run by Kimball Musk. This is the brother to Elon Musk and one of his closest confidants,

09:19a shareholder in Tesla, board member of Tesla, as well as in SpaceX. And the deals, the terms of this

09:28deal were not disclosed, but it's clear that Qatari money is paying an undisclosed amount of money to

09:34Kimball Musk's company. So it will perform light shows in Qatar for the next two years or so. And

09:42one imagines that this deal might have not gone through if the company was not run by Kimball

09:48Musk. What about the rest of the Middle East? Are any other deals between Elon Musk and any

09:54entities over there really piquing your interest? Yeah, so two of the, I don't want to say smaller

10:02players, but maybe less politically engaged on the geopolitical scene players of Oman and Kuwait,

10:09also major Gulf petro states. These two companies, Sovereign Wealth Funds, have also

10:15invested in XAI. So, you know, similar to the Qataris and the Saudis, you know, they're also helping to

10:23bankroll Musk's artificial intelligence company, which has raised over 12 billion dollars in the last

10:31year. So really ramping up investment to build that supercomputer, which is powering Grok, the

10:38large language model that we all find available on X. And so, you know, they're a bit more peripherally

10:46involved. Then, of course, you have the United Arab Emirates, you know, notably Abu Dhabi and Dubai,

10:52the two big ones. They have not invested in XAI like the other Sovereign Wealth Funds. However,

11:02an Abu Dhabi fund has invested in SpaceX. So they are shareholders in SpaceX. And just a couple months

11:10ago, they clinched a deal with Musk's tunneling company, The Boring Company, which is the least

11:17successful of his privately held startups. This was a project that he sort of made into a company on a

11:24whim several years back when he was reading about the power of tunneling and how this could massively

11:30reduce congestion. The Boring Company has raised a lot of money, but it hasn't done much. It only

11:35really has one project, and that's in Las Vegas. And it doesn't actually provide that much utility in

11:40terms of reducing congestion. But that hasn't stopped the UAE from signing a deal with the

11:47Boring Company to work on a project in Dubai. Again, similar to the Qatari deal with Nova Sky

11:53stories, the terms of that deal have not been disclosed. So we don't know what sort of what

11:58that project actually looks like. Interestingly enough, though, it looks like Musk has eyes on a

12:04similar deal between the Boring Company and the Saudis. During his fireside chat with the Saudi

12:10minister yesterday, he did float the idea of, hey, don't forget about the Boring Company. We do great

12:17work. And so he seemed to be kind of hinting at, hey, Saudis, maybe check out what the Boring Company

12:23could do for you. We know that Saudi investors have deep, deep pockets. And the investments we're

12:28talking about right now between Elon Musk and the Middle East are just massive. Are these Middle

12:34Eastern countries wanting to work with Elon Musk because of his companies, because of his business

12:39prowess, or perhaps because he has now waded further into politics? He has Donald Trump's ear. He's one

12:45of his senior advisors. His work on Doge. I mean, what does that really shake out to be?

12:51I think, yes, all of the above. I mean, you make a great point. These are massive, massive sovereign

12:58wealth funds that these states, while small in population, have amassed through their production

13:05and sale of oil. These funds are in the multiple hundred billion dollar scale funds, if not trillions,

13:16in the case of the Saudis. And actually, Oman has a trillion dollar wealth fund. So they can make these

13:23bets in Musk's companies, which make a material difference in the cap table of these firms.

13:28They go a long way towards helping Musk achieve the fundraising and business objectives that he has,

13:34while also being a drop in the bucket for those funds. Now, to your point about why, I think you're

13:41right. It's twofold motivation. One, it's economic. These funds want to generate returns. They want to do

13:49well and make money for, you know, the kingdoms. And Musk has a history of generating returns for

13:56shareholders. If you look at Tesla, if you look at SpaceX, if you look more recently at XAI, you know,

14:02these are firms that have grown under his management. And despite his controversies, he has a record of

14:09generating returns. So, you know, they definitely want alpha. But I think especially over the last year,

14:14as Musk has gone full mega and has become this incredibly influential figure in the Trump

14:20administration, they have every motivation in the world to make Musk happy, to put money in his

14:28pockets or the pockets of his companies, to do deals with his brother, to give contracts to the

14:35boring company for projects that may or may not happen. And so, you know, why not? When you have so

14:43much money sloshing around, you could put some, I mean, you could put it in stocks or you could put

14:47it in the pockets of the richest man in the world who can call up the president anytime, any place and

14:53talk his ear off. So politically and economically, these investments make sense for the Gulf countries.

14:59And it's sort of a different way of doing diplomacy. I think to get to your point at the beginning of

15:05this conversation, what does diplomacy look like under Trump 2.0? I think more so than 1.0,

15:11it really does involve business. And obviously that comes with allegations of cronyism, of corruption,

15:17of conflicts of interest. But I mean, Trump doesn't seem to care. And I don't think Elon Musk

15:21does either. And I want to talk about that even further here, because correct me if I'm wrong about

15:26this characterization. Is it fair to say President Trump went to the Middle East with dealmaking in

15:32mind, diplomacy on the backseat, if it's even on the backseat? Elon Musk tags along to make some deals

15:39with not with President Trump. He tags along President Trump's trip, making deals in the

15:44Middle East. I mean, with any conversation when it comes to money and when it comes to politics,

15:48there's always that gray area of is there a conflict of interest? I mean,

15:52is there a conflict of interest here? How big is that? What are experts saying?

15:58The conflicts of interest are evident for anyone who's watching. I mean, you look at the Qatari

16:04gift of a massive $400 million Boeing jet to Trump. And Trump is trying to brush it off. But even

16:11Republicans are saying, look, this is a massive conflict, not to mention the potential security

16:15concerns of accepting this jet that has potentially been retrofitted by, you know, a foreign power in

16:20ways that, you know, the U.S. might not pick up on. Sure. The conflicts are there. The conflicts are

16:26obvious. I mean, Elon Musk is running several multi-billion dollar companies with

16:32it's their tentacles in countries all around the world while he's also shaping policy for Trump.

16:39And so the conflicts are there. I mean, The Washington Post recently reported that Starlink

16:43is even being used as a leverage point for countries trying to not be exposed to Trump's tariffs.

16:50So, I mean, countries are already picking up on the connections between, well, if we make Musk happy,

16:56maybe we can avoid the wrath of Trump's tariffs. But, you know, I think Trump would say, yes, this is a

17:04this conference, this trip, this is about business. This is about dealmaking. But that's also diplomacy.

17:11I think it's a different take. It's the Trump take on what diplomacy looks like. And I think he drew this

17:17out during his speech in Riyadh yesterday, which was that, look, I'm not your neocon Dick Cheney type

17:26who wants to save or install democracy in your country. Look at how much wealth you all have

17:32created on your own in your own countries. You don't need us telling you how to run your political

17:37systems. Let's do deals. Let's make money together. You know, let's create these partnerships. And

17:44you know, that way we'll create peace through financial partnerships, through business

17:50developments. And of course, it wasn't just Elon Musk who was there, right? Sam Altman was there,

17:55head of OpenAI. Jensen Huang, head of NVIDIA, was there. I mean, tons of large CEOs, billionaires were

18:04part of this event, which was also, you know, the U.S. Saudi Investment Conference. So I don't think

18:09it's a coincidence that Trump's sort of diplomatic mission was paired with that business

18:14event. For Trump, business is diplomacy. I mean, a phrase that has been stuck in my head really

18:20since the plane story came to light is there's no such thing as a free lunch. I mean, is there

18:26such thing as just a free $400 million airplane with no strings attached? Is there such thing as

18:32massive deals for Elon Musk with no strings attached? Has Elon Musk responded to any of these

18:38potential questions about conflicts of interest? Has he said anything to that effect?

18:46Yeah, just because there aren't explicit quid pro quos involved doesn't mean that there aren't

18:52conflicts, right? Even the appearances of conflicts of interest create conflicts of interest. And so,

18:59you know, it's doubtful that Qatar is saying, take this jet in exchange for X. But by giving the jet,

19:08they're automatically going to, you know, turn Donald Trump favorable on them. And, you know,

19:14when they're having discussions about diplomacy or about U.S.-Middle East relations, obviously,

19:20Qatar, too, has had its own strife with its Middle Eastern neighbors, as we saw a few years back when

19:25there was that big brouhaha between it and the Saudis and UAE. So, you know, it's good from the

19:34Qatar perspective to just make the president happy, because, you know, a happy president,

19:40happy U.S. president means that they're probably going to get happy outcomes.

19:44Well, John, I always appreciate your reporting. Thank you so much for joining me. Until next time.

19:50Thanks, Brittany. Talk soon.

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