Trump’s crypto czar meets UAE’s national security adviser on crypto, AI

White House crypto and AI czar David Sacks was among a number of Trump administration officials who recently met with United Arab Emirates officials to discuss emerging technologies and UAE’s potential plans to increase its investment in the United States. 

Sheikh Tahnoon Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the Gulf nation’s national security adviser and brother of the country’s president, said in a March 20 X post that he had spoken with Sacks about AI’s impact, “the expanding role of digital currencies” along with “the investment opportunities emerging at their convergence.”

US President Donald Trump hosted Tahnoon for dinner at the White House on March 18 and posted on his Truth Social platform a day later that he and senior US officials discussed with Tahnoon “ways for our countries to increase our partnership for the advancing of our economic and technological futures.”

Tahnoon (left) meeting with Trump (right) in the Oval Office. Source: Donald Trump

The exact details of Tahnoon’s multiple discussions were not made public, but Bloomberg reported on March 19 that people familiar with his meeting with Trump said he planned to talk about technology, energy and increasing the UAE’s investment in the US.

Multiple posts on Tahnoon’s X account show him meeting Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to discuss trade and investment between the two nations, along with chatting with White House cost-cutting czar Elon Musk via video call to discuss government systems.

He also spoke about AI with tech executives, including Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.

David Sacks (left) meeting with Tahnoon (right) to discuss crypto and AI. Source: Tahnoon Bin Zayed Al Nahyan

Bloomberg reported that Tahnoon planned to discuss how the UAE could gain easier access to computer chips after the Biden administration restricted exports on them in 2023 and to note the country’s plans to build tech infrastructure on US soil. 

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Tahnoon is the chair of the investment firm MGX, which reportedly plans to throw $7 billion into a $500 billion private-led project called “Stargate” to build AI data centers across the US, which Trump announced just days after returning to the White House.

MGX, which invested $2 billion into Binance earlier this month, is a small part of a $1.5 trillion empire that Tahnoon controls, which includes two of the UAE’s sovereign wealth funds, the country’s largest bank, First Abu Dhabi Bank, and the AI development firm G42.

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