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There were dinners at the homes of Hollywood moguls, meetings with tech titans in Silicon Valley, a visit to the desert to talk about space travel with Richard Branson and a stop at Lockheed Martin to check up on satellites and a missile defense system. Along the way, he made time for Eric Garcetti, the mayor of Los Angeles; Leon Panetta, the former defense secretary; and Oprah Winfrey.

As part of his three-week tour across America, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, the 32-year-old heir to the throne, cruised through California last week, buying up Four Seasons hotels in Los Angeles and San Francisco, promoting a new, modernist image for his conservative nation and seeking investments to develop an entertainment industry in the desert kingdom.

The breadth and scope of the trip, which analysts described as extravagantly ambitious with few parallels in history, was on full display during the California leg of his journey. In Hollywood, the Saudis announced a deal with AMC to open the first movie theaters in the kingdom in decades, and reached pacts to open a Six Flags park and to host a Cirque du Soleil performance. In Silicon Valley, the prince discussed cloud computing services at Google headquarters and visited Apple, where he met with Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive.

The tour came after a period in which the crown prince, who rose to next in line for the throne under his father King Salman last year, consolidated his power at home by jailing — in the Ritz Carlton hotel in Riyadh — some of the country’s wealthiest businessmen, including members of the royal family. He has also been dogged by criticism from human rights activists for waging a war in Yemen that has killed thousands of civilians.