It was in late March that Silicon Valley decided that it’s no longer shameful to accept massive investment dollars from Saudi Arabia.
“The more I think about it, the more Saudi almost feels like a startup,” Adam Neumann, the WeWork founder, told the audience of the Miami conference hosted by the kingdom.
Venture capitalists Ben Horowitz and Marc Andreessen were pumped up, too.
“Saudi has a founder. You don’t call him a founder, you call him, ‘His Royal Highness,’ but he’s creating a new culture, he’s creating a new vision for the country, he’s got a very exciting plan to execute, and the people in the country are fired up to do it,” said Horowitz.
The whole scene at the Miami event, which was hosted by an offshoot of Saudi’s sovereign wealth fund, would have been unimaginable four and a half years ago.
In October 2018, Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, or MBS as he’s often called, was determined by the CIA to have ordered the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Though Saudi Arabia had been a financial supporter of Silicon Valley, the killing led some American investors to speak out against MBS. That month, bold-faced names canceled their attendance at Davos in the Desert, a giant event in Riyadh hosted by the Future Investment Initiative Institute, a nonprofit linked to the Public Investment Fund, the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia and the sponsor of the Miami conference.
But five years later, the Future Investment Initiative Institute, which is essentially MBS’s private think tank, is hosting investors, CEOs, and former government officials at events in Saudi Arabia and the United States. The latest one in Miami featured guests like Jared Kushner, Steve Mnuchin, and Semafor cofounder Justin Smith, alongside the mayor of Miami. The event even drew out some celebrities, including DJ Khaled and A-Rod, and is scheduled to return to Florida next year.
A few days after the Miami event, Saudi Arabia…
Read the full article here
