President-elect Donald Trump announced on Tuesday (January 7) that DAMAC Properties, led by Emirati billionaire Hussain Sajwani, will invest $20 billion in data centers across the United States. Sajwani, a close business associate of the Trump family, committed the investment as part of efforts to further push U.S. infrastructure and technology.
The investment aims to showcase Trump’s ability to attract significant foreign funding for large-scale projects. It comes on the heels of a $100 billion pledge by Japanese billionaire Masayoshi Son, announced last month.
At a news conference, Trump suggested Sajwani’s decision was influenced by optimism surrounding the election. “He was very inspired by the election and wouldn’t do it without the election,” Trump said. He also reiterated plans to expedite regulatory approvals for large investments exceeding $1 billion.
“The investment will support massive new data centers across the Midwest, the Sun Belt area, and also to 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 on Tuesday.
Trump said the first phase of the investments would be in the states of Texas, Arizona, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Ohio, Illinois, Michigan and Indiana.
“Our foray into the US market in data centres represents a significant milestone in our journey to build a global digital infrastructure platform that will empower businesses today and in the future,” Sajwani said in a statement.
“Leveraging our expertise in real estate and data centers, we aim to deliver best-in-class infrastructure that supports the next wave of cloud and AI growth, helping further to position the U.S. in the technology and global data ecosystem,” he added.
DAMAC’s Partnership With Trump
DAMAC Properties has a history of collaborating with the Trump Organization. Under Sajwani’s leadership, DAMAC constructed the Trump International Golf Club within a vast desert development on the outskirts of Dubai, completed shortly before Donald Trump assumed the presidency.
As part of the partnership, DAMAC paid the Trump Organization a licensing fee worth millions, following a model Trump’s company has employed in both domestic and international projects. Plans for an additional DAMAC project featuring a Trump-branded golf course deeper in the desert were later scrapped. Similarly, a proposed $2 billion deal between DAMAC and the Trump Organization, discussed after Trump’s 2016 election win, never came to fruition.
