Gulf

1. Qatar preps for Trump
2. US tech leaders in Saudi
3. Houthis reach deal with US
4. AI in UAE schools
5. Saudi mortgages surge
6. ICJ dismisses Sudan case

Texting with a former NSC staffer on what success looks like for Trump’s trip.

One of the challenges of covering — or even just working in — this region is figuring out whether the person across the table is a billionaire royal who could change your life, a fringe member of a ruling family, or a charlatan running a long con.

Wealth here is often hidden, which creates this ambiguity. Legal cases offer rare glimpses: Saudi Arabia’s Sheikh Khalid bin Mahfouz had to pay $188 million to settle with US regulators over looting charges at Bank of Credit and Commerce International. Maan al-Sanea, once listed by Forbes among the world’s 100 richest people, borrowed billions and his company entered a decade-long restructuring after the 2008 financial crisis. His lawyers asked to release frozen Cayman funds, to cover the cost of feeding exotic animals in his private zoo.

This week, Sheikh Nayef Bin Eid Al Thani — a little-known royal with a Qatari name and a business in Dubai — announced plans to build an $8.8 billion finance hub in the Maldives. The island nation’s president was there, touting a deal with the sheikh’s company, MBS Global Investments, that promises a free zone with no corporate tax and incentives for blockchain firms.

MBS Global doesn’t have much of a track record, beyond announcements: a collaboration with Brunei, and a partnership with the Malaysian Investment Development Authority, among others.

Maybe this project is real. But stories like the Dubai prince who announced a Hong Kong family office only to disappear last year, or my own 2015 reporting on an obscure Qatari sheikh investing $5 billion to a Chinese petrochemicals firm (nothing came of it), make me cautious.

But that’s the point — you never really know.

Qatar prepares giant Boeing deal

Saudi Arabia and the UAE have already made massive pledges to invest in the US prior to President Donald Trump’s Gulf visit next week — and now Qatar is stepping up. The gas-rich country is planning to order around 100 Boeing widebody planes, Bloomberg reported, after the White House “made clear it would like similar commitments from Qatar” as other Gulf states.

Trump has asked Saudi Arabia to commit $1 trillion to the US, but the kingdom has so far offered $600 billion in trade and investment over the next four years. The UAE plans to invest $1.4 trillion in the US in the next decade. Including the proposed Boeing deals — other regional carriers are also considering buying American planes — as well as weapons purchases and other investments in technology, energy, and infrastructure, Trump’s haul on this trip will dwarf the $400 billion in deals Saudi signed during Trump’s visit in 2017.

Separately, Trump plans to announce that the US will officially refer to the Persian Gulf as the Gulf of Arabia, The Associated Press reports, a move that will please Arabs and antagonize Iranians.

Kingdom to court US tech

The US’ share of total foreign direct investment into Saudi Arabia, according to the kingdom. While US President Donald Trump’s visit to the Gulf is expected to yield US-bound investments, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman will be courting executives from some of the largest American technology firms at the invite-only Saudi-US Investment Forum on May 13. It comes as the kingdom looks to grow its technology sector with opportunities in data centers and cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and cybersecurity. Palantir’s Alex Karp; IBM’s Arvind Krishna; and Alphabet and Google’s Ruth Porat are slated to attend.

Prem G. Kumar is a partner at advisory firm Albright Stonebridge Group (and a former senior director in the National Security Council staff for the Obama administration).

Oman mediates US-Houthi truce

Oman said it mediated a ceasefire between Washington and Yemen’s Houthis, after a nearly two-month-long US bombing campaign against the Iran-backed group. US President Donald Trump on Tuesday said the Houthis “capitulated” and ceased attacks on American ships in the Red Sea; the group last attacked a commercial ship in December, targeting the critical trading route to protest Israel’s war in Gaza. Israel, which bombed Yemen’s international airport Tuesday in retaliation for a missile strike on Tel Aviv, was reportedly blindsided by the ceasefire. But it was the “perfect” moment for Trump to declare victory over the Houthis, ahead of his Gulf trip, The Economist’s Gregg Carlstrom wrote: “Saudi will be pleased with de-escalation.”

AI mandated in UAE schools

The UAE will overhaul its education system for the artificial intelligence age, becoming one of the first nations in the world to mandate AI learning. The country is looking to harness the technology to improve outcomes and combat disengagement in classrooms, its education minister said. Starting next academic year, the initiative will reach up to 400,000 students who will be taught to design AI systems and explore issues of ethics and bias, as well as practice prompt engineering with real-world applications. The curriculum ranges from teaching kindergarteners about how robots can be helpers, to developing machine learning algorithms in higher grades. “[Students] felt like there was a big gap in what they were interested in and what they were being taught,” Education Minister Sarah Al Amiri told Semafor.

Saudi mortgage boom reveals cracks

Saudi Arabia’s mortgage issuance surged after three years of contraction, a rise that masks cracks in the property market. Banks issued 91 billion Saudi riyals ($24.3 billion) in new home loans last year, a 17% jump driven by lower interest rates and state guarantees aimed at boosting homeownership, according to S&P Global Ratings. The loans are helping the kingdom close on its target of 70% of Saudis owning their own home by 2030; it’s already at 65.4%. Saudi Arabia is the Gulf’s biggest economy and will soon be the world’s largest construction market.

But prices and rents are rising fast in Riyadh and Jeddah, and home buyers are borrowing to buy off-plan properties — homes that are still under construction — compounding risks for banks and raising concerns that buyers are being priced out of already built units, S&P said.

Top UN court dismisses UAE case

The International Court of Justice dismissed Sudan’s case alleging that the UAE backed the Rapid Support Forces, a paramilitary group accused of committing genocide during the African country’s civil war. “This decision is a clear and decisive affirmation of the fact that this case was utterly baseless,” said Reem Ketait, deputy assistant minister for political affairs at the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs. For the UAE, the ICJ ruling follows an April 29 UN report that offered no evidence of the country arming Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces.

Sudan’s civil war, which began after a power struggle between two former allies who staged a coup together in 2021, entered its second year last month. Tens of thousands have been killed and millions displaced in what is now one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. Sudan’s defense minister said on Tuesday the country was cutting diplomatic relations with the UAE.

Economy

• Saudi Arabia’s deficit soared in the first quarter, even before oil had plunged to below $60 a barrel. The kingdom posted its highest fiscal deficit since late 2021 and is on track to run a budget gap of more than double its forecast of 101 billion riyals in 2025, according to Goldman Sachs. — Bloomberg
• Economic uncertainty did not dent job prospects in Saudi Arabia and the UAE in April. Hiring in non-oil sectors rose as both economies maintained diversification pushes. — The National

Checking In

• MGM Resorts plans to open a 1,400-room beachfront resort in Dubai by the third quarter of 2027, a decade after the Las Vegas developer announced the project. “Hopefully we’ll get to add gaming,” its CEO said on an earnings call this week. — Skift
• Gulf carriers were among those that cancelled and rerouted flights over South Asia after India’s strikes in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir. Emirates, Etihad — which said it had rerouted some planes mid-flight — and Qatar Airways halted flights to airports in northern India and Pakistan, the latter of which has closed all airspace. — The National

Entertainment

• MrBeast, YouTube’s top creator with more than 390 million subscribers, will join Riyadh Season with exclusive content, live challenges, and the launch of MrBeast Park, including an appearance at the opening ceremony, according to Turki Al-Sheikh, head of Saudi Arabia’s General Entertainment Authority.

An “environment of uncertainties” is holding back corporate investment in artificial intelligence technology, Gary Cohn, the IBM vice chairman who served as a key interlocutor between Donald Trump and the business community in the president’s first term, told Semafor’s Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson.

Macroeconomic conditions are holding back faster growth in AI spending, said Cohn. “There are very few companies in the world that are spending more today than they were a year ago, on anything,” he said in an interview, and the source of their “wait-and-see” wariness is trade policy.