US President Donald Trump’s administration is clearing a path for two key Persian Gulf allies to pursue their artificial intelligence (AI) ambitions — and some of the biggest US tech companies are seizing on that opening with plans to spend billions of dollars in the region.
Under agreements with the US expected to be unveiled in coming days, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are poised to win wider access to advanced AI chips from Nvidia Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) that are considered the gold standard for running AI models.
The deals are taking shape while Trump visits the Middle East seeking to forge deeper business ties that put US technology initiatives at center stage. Even before any formal announcement of accords between the US and its partners, news began to emerge of US companies readying expanded projects in the region:
Photo: AFP
Nvidia, the world’s biggest semiconductor maker, would supply its most advanced AI-related chips to Saudi Arabia’s Humain, a company created to push that country’s AI infrastructure efforts. Humain would get “several hundred thousand” of Nvidia’s most advanced processors over the next five years, starting with 18,000 of its cutting-edge GB300 Grace Blackwell products and its InfiniBand networking technology.
AMD, Nvidia’s nearest rival in AI accelerators, would provide chips and software for data centers “stretching from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to the United States” in a US$10 billion project, Humain and AMD said.
Global AI Inc, a US tech venture, also plans to collaborate with Humain, in an agreement expected to be worth billions of dollars, according to a person familiar with the matter. Founded by US tech industry veterans, Global AI intends to build a data center in New York that would rely on chips developed by Nvidia, with plans for more centers.
Amazon.com Inc and Humain said they would invest more than US$5 billion to build an “AI zone” in Saudi Arabia. Among other projects, Humain would use technologies from the Amazon Web Services cloud unit to develop a marketplace of AI agents for use by Saudi Arabia’s government.
Cisco Systems Inc, the world’s largest provider of networking gear, is working with Humain as well. The company said it would be combining its “global expertise with the kingdom’s bold AI ambitions” to build infrastructure. It also extended a partnership with Abu Dhabi AI firm G42.
Saudi Arabian venture capital firm STV launched a US$100 million AI fund with backing from Alphabet Inc’s Google. The investments would be focused on early-stage start-ups in the Middle East and North Africa, and support the development of infrastructure, according to a statement. It did not disclose the amount of capital put up by Google.
OpenAI is considering building new data center capacity in the UAE that could greatly expand its footprint in the Middle East, according to people familiar with the matter. The deal is not yet final and could still change, the people said.
At the same time, the Trump administration is weighing a deal that would allow the UAE to import more than a million advanced Nvidia chips, people familiar with the matter said, a quantity that far exceeds limits under previous administration’s AI chip regulations — and one that has raised concerns that US hardware risks ending up in China’s hands.
The deal, which is still being negotiated, would let the UAE import 500,000 of the most advanced chips each year from now to 2027, the people said. One-fifth would be set aside for G42, while the remainder would go to US companies building data centers in the Gulf nation, according to the people.
Meanwhile, to pave the way on AI, the US moved formally on Tuesday to rescind the so-called AI diffusion rule launched under former US president Joe Biden. The measure, which created three broad tiers of access for countries seeking AI chips, had faced intense opposition from companies like Nvidia and US allies over the constraints it placed on countries’ chip purchases. Trump administration officials are now drafting their own approach that is expected to shift toward negotiating individual deals with countries.
However, prospects of a UAE accord stirred warnings from a key lawmaker on the House Select Committee on China, which has long sounded the alarm about G42’s ties to Huawei Technologies Co (華為) and other companies in China.
“We raised concerns about G42 last year for this very reason — and we need safeguards in place before more agreements move forward,” US Representative John Moolenaar, the top Republican on the panel, wrote on X.
In a nod to those concerns over Huawei, the US Department of Commerce said as it revoked the AI diffusion rule that the US would consider use of the Chinese telecom equipment maker’s new Ascend chip a violation of US export controls.
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