Over the course of an eight-minute interview, Elon Musk touted his numerous businesses and vision of a "Star Trek future" while telling the crowd that his Tesla Optimus robots had performed a dance for Donald Trump and the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, to the tune of YMCA. He also announced that Starlink, his satellite internet company, had struck a deal for use in Saudi Arabia for maritime and aviation usage; looking to the near future, he expressed his desire to bring Tesla's self-driving robotaxis to the country. "We could not be more appreciative of having a lifetime partner and a friend like you, Elon, to the Kingdom," Saudi Arabia's minister of communications and IT, Abdullah Alswaha, told Musk. Although Musk has pivoted away from his role as de facto leader of the so-called "department of government efficiency" and moved out of the White House, the Saudi summit showed how he is still retaining his proximity to the US president and international influence. As Musk returns to his businesses as his primary focus, he is still primed to reap the rewards of his connections and political sway over Trump.

Former President Donald Trump is embarking this week on a high-stakes tour of the Persian Gulf region, targeting business deals and strategic partnerships with three oil-rich nations: Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. The trip marks Trump's first major foreign visit of his new term and comes as nuclear negotiations with Iran drag on and as war continues between Israel and the Palestinian terror organization, Hamas, in the Gaza Strip. While business is the official focus, the backdrop is anything but calm. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt described the mission as part of Trump's broader vision that "extremism is defeated [through] commerce and cultural exchanges." Under President Joe Biden, U.S. relations with Gulf states cooled, particularly after Biden vowed to make Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman a "pariah" over the 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia told President Trump on Wednesday that the kingdom intends to increase its investment and trade with the United States by at least 600 billion over the next four years, according to the official Saudi Press Agency. The crown prince, the de facto leader of Saudi Arabia, told Mr. Trump that his new administration had the ability to create "unprecedented economic prosperity" in the United States, and that the kingdom wanted to participate, a statement from the Saudi Press Agency said. There was no immediate confirmation of the call from the White House. Mr. Trump has promised to accelerate investment in the United States, particularly to help revive manufacturing. While campaigning last year, he said he would use a mix of tax cuts and tariffs to force companies to invest in the United States.

Elon Musk just dragged ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence programs into the Trump crosshairs by repeating his warning that current AI models are too "woke" and "politically correct." "A lot of the AIs that are being trained in the San Francisco Bay Area, they take on the philosophy of people around them," Musk said at the Future Investment Initiative, a Saudi Arabia government–backed event held in Riyadh this week. "So you have a woke, nihilistic--in my opinion--philosophy that is being built into these AIs." Although Musk is himself a polarizing figure, he is right about AI systems harboring political biases. The issue, however, is far from one-sided, and Musk's framing may help further his own interests due to his ties to Trump.

After Apple's product launch event this week, WIRED did a deep dive on the company's new secure server environment, known as Private Cloud Compute, which attempts to replicate in the cloud the security and privacy of processing data locally on users' individual devices. The goal is to minimize possible exposure of data processed for Apple Intelligence, the company's new AI platform. In addition to hearing about PCC from Apple's senior vice president of software engineering, Craig Federighi, WIRED readers also received a first look at content generated by Apple Intelligence's "Image Playground" feature as part of crucial updates on the recent birthday of Federighi's dog Bailey. Turning to privacy protection of a very different kind in another new AI service, WIRED looked at how users of the social media platform X can keep their data from being slurped up by the "unhinged" generative AI tool from xAI known as Grok AI. And in other news about Apple products, researchers developed a technique for using eye tracking to discern passwords and PINs people typed using 3D Apple Vision Pro avatars--a sort of keylogger for mixed reality.

NVIDIA is doing very well for itself, so much so that the chip maker has overtaken Alphabet, Google's parent company, to become the third most valuable company in the United States, Reuters reports. The news comes almost immediately after NVIDIA pushed past Amazon in the rankings, with the company now valued at 1.83 trillion. Worldwide, it sits in fourth, behind American companies Microsoft ( 3.04 trillion) and Apple ( 2.84 trillion) and the Saudi Arabian state-owned oil company Saudi Aramco ( 2.07 trillion). AI's boom over the last year is largely to thank for NVIDIA's jump in valuation, with about 80 percent of the high-end chip market in its hands. It created the H100 chip, which powers LLMs at OpenAI, Amazon, Meta and more.

There seems to be no stopping Nvidia's scorching rally. The day after surpassing the market value of Amazon, the chip giant has now overtaken Alphabet as well. Shares of Nvidia rose 2.5% on Wednesday, closing with a market capitalization of about 1.83 trillion, and topping the search giant's value of roughly 1.82 trillion, data shows. With the gain, the chipmaker has become the world's fourth-most valuable company. Saudi Aramco, valued at about 2 trillion, looms as the next milestone.

Saudi Arabia has made no secret of its passion for gaming and e-sports, so there was no shortage of young Saudis to take in a museum of video game history stretching from the original Pac-Man to PlayStation 5. It is part of Gamers8, an eight-week festival of e-sports tournaments in the capital, Riyadh, with a $45m prize pool – a project to inspire young people to create their own blockbuster titles. The passion is believed to come from the very top, with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) said to be an avid Call of Duty player. Last year, the 38-year-old de facto ruler announced a $38bn investment strategy for the Savvy Games Group, owned by the Public Investment Fund. As it gathers momentum, the national gaming and e-sports strategy emphasises local game production, promising to turn the kingdom into "an Eden for game developers" that can produce new titles "promoting Saudi and Arabic culture".

Saudi Arabia has signed a $5.6bn deal with a Chinese company to manufacture electric vehicles as the kingdom is looking to lead the Arab world in expanding economic ties with Beijing. The memorandum of understanding signed on Sunday with electric and self-driving car maker Human Horizons on the development, manufacture and sale of vehicles accounted for more than half of the $10bn in investments signed on the first day of a major business conference being held in the capital, Riyadh. The 10th Arab-China Business Conference held under the patronage of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman aims to enhance a "strategic" partnership based around the Belt and Road Initiative, the Saudi Press Agency said. More than 3,500 government officials, investors, business representatives and experts from 23 countries have reportedly participated in the event, co-organised with the Arab League and the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade. As the world's top exporter of oil, Saudi Arabia's relations with China still largely revolve around energy, but as part of its Vision 2030 plan to diversify the economy, Riyadh is planning to boost investments in non-oil sectors, including in electric cars.

There are just a handful of companies that have surpassed the $1 trillion market cap, including Google parent Alphabet, Microsoft, Saudi Aramco, Amazon and Apple. On Tuesday, California-based Nvidia's market cap jumped high enough to be among their ranks. The chipmaker, which makes graphics processing units (GPUs) that help power generative artificial intelligence platforms, has seen its stock price soar as more companies look to expand their AI offerings. Nvidia hit a market cap of $1 trillion Tuesday with shares opening at $405.95, although it eased below that milestone by midday after shares dipped below $404.86. The company's valuation puts it above Facebook parent company Meta, Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway and Elon Musk's Tesla.