Saudi Arabia continues to lurk as a dominant force in Silicon Valley. This year, it is developing a $40 billion A.I.-focused fund with the venture capital powerhouse Andreessen Horowitz and making a dozen other investments in prominent VC funds and startups. The kingdom’s presence in the U.S. tech sector came under scrutiny in 2018 after the murder of the American journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The U.S. and other Western nations tied the crime directly to Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman Al Saud. Soon after the incident, then U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, Uber (UBER) CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, then World Bank president Jim Yong Kim, JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon, and many other esteemed finance and technology leaders announced they would be boycotting the Future Investment Initiative conference in Saudi Arabia, an international business event dubbed the “Davos in the Desert.”

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