Trump’s Dubai billionaire ally promises $27.3b to build US data centres

Washington – Since Donald Trump was first elected in 2016, billionaire Hussain Sajwani, the head of Damac Group, wanted the world to know he was the US president’s man in the Middle East.

The real estate mogul thrust himself into the spotlight again on Jan 7, standing alongside the President-elect and promising an investment of at least US$20 billion (S$27.3 billion) to build new US data centres from Arizona to Ohio.

The details of how Mr Sajwani – whose net worth has surged in recent years to about US$13 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index – will finance such an undertaking were not immediately apparent.

But what is clear is that Mr Sajwani is looking to capitalise on a relationship that dates back a decade, when the two partnered on luxury golf courses in Dubai.

“The investment will support massive new data centres across the Midwest, the Sun Belt area, and also keep America on the cutting edge of technology and artificial intelligence,” Trump said at a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

Mr Sajwani, who has described himself in press releases as “Trump’s Middle Eastern business partner”, said his company would invest more than US$20 billion “if the opportunity, the market, allow us”.

Trump said the deal’s first phase would span Texas, Arizona, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Ohio, Illinois, Michigan and Indiana, painting it as critical to keeping the US competitive in emerging technologies.

He vowed to help move it quickly through the environmental and permitting process and cast it as the result of his election victory.

Business leaders – domestic and foreign – have sought to court Trump as he prepares to take office on Jan 20, including visiting him at Mar-a-Lago and donating to his inauguration fund.

During a press conference in December, Trump announced another major investment – a pledge from SoftBank Group to invest US$100 billion in the US over the next four years – alongside the company’s chief executive, Mr Masayoshi Son.

Trump has pledged to use tariffs and tax policy to encourage foreign companies to invest in the US. On Jan 6, Trump denied a Washington Post report that his team was considering scaling back their plans for trade levies with more targeted tariffs focused on specific critical imports. 

As for privately held Damac, which got its start focusing on luxury real estate in Dubai, it has been pushing into other parts of the the world in recent years.

The announced US investment is part of a larger foray into the data centre business. Edgnex Data Centres, a unit of the Dubai-based conglomerate, plans to invest US$3 billion over the next three to five years in building data centres in South-east Asia, specifically in Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand. BLOOMBERG