DAMAC Properties CEO Hussain Sajwani has announced that he will invest $20 billion in the construction of datacentres across the United States.
The UAE-based property tycoon made the announcement during a news conference at the residence of incoming US President Donald Trump in Mar-a-Lago.
The announcement only serves to further indicate Trump’s uncanny ability to secure megadeals with large entities.
In a video that was hosted by USA Today, Trump expressed his delight at securing the investment from DAMAC Properties, and indicated that the investment may increase in due course.
“I’m thrilled to announce today that DAMAC will be investing at least 20 billion dollars over a very short period of time into the United States and they may go double, or even somewhat more than double that amount of money.”
Sajwani outlined that the data centre investment would focus on AI and cloud for hyperscalers, and Bloomberg reported that the first phase of the agreement would see datacentres be built in states such as Texas, Arizona, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Ohio, Illinois, Michigan and Indiana.
Trump’s inauguration will take place on January 20th, and he stated that the deal with DAMAC was critical in keeping the US competitive across emerging technologies.
The deal comes hot on the heels of the announcement by SoftBank Group CEO Masayoshi Son to invest $100bn in the United States over the next four years.
The AI arms race is very much in full swing, and will only exacerbate further when Trump returns to power in Washington.
There has been a huge investment from some of the world’s largest tech players to provide generative AI services, whilst just a few days ago, Microsoft President Brad Smith announced the US technology behemoth would spend $80bn on AI-enabled datacentres.
