- Trump announced a new $600 billion investment from Saudi Arabia which includes $20 billion for AI data centers in the U.S.
- But it’s not clear whether these projects are incremental or previously planned
- It’s also not clear whether there are any consequences for the companies involved if they back out
Investments in new data center and energy infrastructure for AI got top billing as the U.S. government unveiled a sprawling $600 billion investment deal with Saudi Arabia. The announcement, however, raises questions about whether the named investments will actually come to fruition. After all, we’ve been burned before.
Though a fraction of the total package, a $20 billion pledge from Saudi-based data center operator DataVolt to build new facilities stateside received pole placement in a press release from the White House. That’s a little weird considering that the next line highlighted a collective $80 billion investment from Google, Oracle, Salesforce, AMD, Uber and DataVolt in unspecified “cutting-edge transformative technologies” in both the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. But hey.
The announcement marks the latest bid by President Donald Trump to position the U.S. as a leader in the AI realm and stop China from running away with the game entirely.
Before his inauguration in January, Trump touted a $20 billion investment in U.S. data centers from United Arab Emirates company DAMAC Properties. He subsequently talked up the $100 billion Stargate initiative, a joint venture by OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank aimed at bolstering data center and AI infrastructure.
Pesky questions
But the announcements raise two key questions as far as I can see. First, it is well documented that a data center boom is already well underway. According to Synergy Research Group’s data, the number of known data center projects in the pipeline jumped 60% over the past three years, from 314 in March 2022 to 504 in March 2025.
Additionally, AWS, Google, Microsoft and Meta long ago announced plans to spend well over $300 billion building new data centers in 2025 alone, with Meta recently bumping up its planned expenditure in light of Trump’s tariffs.
So, it’s unclear whether Trump is actually announcing new construction that will incrementally increase the total number of projects and spending, or whether the companies involved are pandering to him by allowing him to announced builds they already had planned.
Though I wouldn’t be surprised by the latter, it seems DataVolt (which tapped Supermicro to supply liquid cooling for the new facilities) might actually be in the former category. Truthfully, it’s hard to tell given the lack of detail provided in the White House release and the lack of a release entirely on DataVolt’s website.
Will they or won’t they?
The second big question is whether the Trump administration had the foresight to include any enforcement mechanisms in its deal this go around after having learned a lesson from that huge embarrassing failure in Wisconsin. I’m willing to bet not.
Turns out that’s a detail that could matter a LOT, not just for Trump’s reputation but also U.S. citizens looking to these investments to bring jobs and the economy that is banking on the compute and AI power they are supposed to bring.
The $10 billion investment Trump promised from Foxconn was supposed to provide Wisconsin with more than 13,000 jobs. But in the end, Foxconn said it planned to employ just over 1,400.
It took three years before Microsoft stepped up to build a data center campus on the largely vacant site. Microsoft’s project was expected to bring 2,300 construction jobs to that area by 2025. Even adding to Foxconn’s lowered tally, that’s still nowhere near the original promise.
The stakes are even higher given the product this time isn’t manufactured goods, but sorely needed AI and cloud computing capabilities that could fuel U.S. companies.
Promises kept are more valuable than promises made. But no one is keeping their eye on the prize.
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