Tesla CEO and billionaire Elon Musk is expected to attend a dinner hosted by US President Donald Trump for Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Washington DC on Tuesday. MBS’s visit is the first to the US in seven years, since the 2018 killing of Saudi critic Jamal Khashoggi sparked global outrage.
Musk along with golf tiger Tiger Woods was invited to the event from Trump according to Punchbowl News.
However, it is not clear whether Musk has accepted the invitation.
The dinner will follow a US-Saudi investment forum at the John F Kennedy Center for Performing Arts, which will include the CEOs of Chevron, Qualcomm, Cisco, General Dynamics and Pfizer, Reuters reported, citing sources.
Senior executives from IBM, Google Alphabet, Salesforce, Andreessen Horowitz, Halliburton, Adobe, Aramco, State Street and Parsons Corp are also expected to attend the forum, the news agency said.
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‘Unfortunately I could not attend’
In early September, the Tesla CEO declined an invitation from Trump to attend a dinner for top tech and business leaders at the White House after a dramatic spat with the US president in June.
While there were conflicting reports at the time about whether Musk was insulted, the Tesla CEO took to X to dispel the rumors, saying that he was in fact invited to the event but had other commitments.
“My representative will be there,” Musk said at the time in response to user X, who asked in disbelief, “Bill Gates but not Elon Musk…wtf?”
A screenshot showing Elon Musk’s response to user X’s question about whether he would attend Trump’s dinner for top business leaders.
However, after their fallout, Trump and Musk were also seen in public for the first time in September, at a memorial service for slain activist Charlie Kirk.
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What’s on the agenda for the Trump-MBS meeting?
Trump and Saudi Arabia’s crown prince will seek to deepen their decades-old cooperation on oil and security, Reuters reported, adding that the kingdom and the US would also seek to expand relations on trade, technology and even nuclear technology.
The agency said Saudi Arabia is pursuing deals related to nuclear energy and artificial intelligence (AI) as Riyadh pursues its ambitious Vision 2030 plan to become a global player in AI technology to compete with the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which recently signed a multibillion-dollar artificial intelligence deal with the US for access to cutting-edge chips.
The Trump-MBS meeting on Tuesday is likely to include the sale of Lockheed Martin’s advanced F-35 jets, with the US president saying on Monday: “I will say we will do it. We will sell the F-35.”
The sale of one of the world’s most advanced fighter jets to Saudi Arabia, if completed, would be a major concession for the Kingdom as the US seeks to pressure it to join the Abraham Accords and normalize relations with Israel.
In May, Trump visited the kingdom, where Saudi Arabia has pledged $600 billion in US investment.
