President-elect Donald Trump is scoring deals and making headlines even before he returns to the White House. On Tuesday, he held a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida to announce a promised $20 billion investment in U.S. data centers from fellow real estate mogul Hussain Sajwani. That makes Sajwani, a Dubai-based property developer and longtime Trump business partner, the latest foreign billionaire to announce a headline-grabbing deal with Trump since his election victory in November. Last month, Japan’s Masayoshi Son, who founded investment firm Softbank, promised to put $100 billion in the U.S. over the next four years.

What’s the attraction for Sajwani? It’s surely one way to curry favor with Trump, with whom he’s done business before. Plus the AI boom. “We've been studying the market and we think it's the right time now. There's a huge demand for AI," Sajwani, 71, told Forbes on Tuesday afternoon, speaking on a video call from a wood-paneled room at Mar-a-Lago, where he has been staying for the past nine days. “I think the new administration will be more pro-business and we're excited about the coming four years."

Sajwani told Forbes that he had been mulling an investment in U.S. data centers last year but decided to press forward with his plans after Trump’s election victory in November. “We wanted to see a more friendly administration,” he says. “When I arrived [at Mar-a-Lago] for the new year, I spoke to [Trump] and he welcomed the idea."

Another billionaire Sajwani met at Mar-a-Lago was Elon Musk, who has been spending much of his time by Trump’s side since the November election and was also named by Trump to co-lead a new advisory body, the Department of Government Efficiency. Since 2022, Sajwani says he’s put up to $2 billion into American private equity firms and startups, including investments in Musk’s SpaceX in 2023 and in his artificial intelligence firm xAI last year.

“He's a genius, a legend," says Sajwani of Musk. “Some of his companies we've invested in, like SpaceX, we've made three to four times our money in less than two years with the new valuations."

But $20 billion is an awfully big number for a billionaire worth just over $5 billion, by Forbes estimates. Most of Sajwani’s fortune lies in his 100% stake in Damac Properties, the luxury real estate developer he founded in 2002. Damac sells high-end villas and apartments and builds golf courses in its resort communities in the U.A.E., Jordan, London, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

“Damac has sold quite well in the last four years in Dubai and a lot of cash will be coming out of........

© Forbes