President-elect Trump announced Tuesday that Emirati billionaire Hussein Sajwani plans to invest $20 billion in the United States “in a very short period of time” and build data centers across the country.
The investment will support the construction of new data centers in the Midwest and Sunbelt regions, with the first phase of the project focused on Texas, Arizona, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Ohio, Illinois, Michigan and Indiana.
President Trump said at a press conference at Mar-a-Lago that the influx of money will help “keep America on the cutting edge of technology.”
“Artificial intelligence is making huge inroads into data centers, and this is going to be a very hot item in the coming years,” he added.
The president-elect joined Mr. Sajwani, CEO of Dubai-based real estate developer Damac Properties, at a resort in Palm Beach on Tuesday.
“We're very excited about his leadership right now and his open strategy and policies to encourage companies to come to the United States,” Sajwani said of President Trump. “We have been waiting for this moment for the past four years.”
He also suggested that DAMAC may eventually increase its investments in the United States.
The announcement comes just weeks after President Trump announced a $100 billion investment in the United States from Japanese company SoftBank focused on artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies.
A similar tone was echoed at the event, with SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son saying that his confidence in the U.S. economy has “increased tremendously” following President Trump's victory in November.
President Trump vowed Tuesday to expedite environmental reviews of companies like DAMAC and SoftBank that invest more than $1 billion in the United States.
“Everyone is afraid that they're going to come and get caught up in the quagmire. Unfortunately, this quagmire is rampant in the United States. It's a quagmire of environmental and various other regulations and rules.” the president said.
“I tell people, if you invest more than $1 billion, we're going to do this for people who invest a lot less than that, but we guarantee that, I “We intend to move them quickly into the environmental process,” he added.
