The United States government announced sweeping agreements to sell tens of billions of dollars worth of AI technology and services to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
What’s new: The deals include the U.S. AI chip designers AMD and Nvidia as well as tech giants Amazon, Google, IBM, Oracle, and Qualcomm. The chip companies will supply hundreds of thousands of advanced chips to the two Middle Eastern countries, including chips that have been restricted by previous U.S. administrations.
How it works: The U.S. companies will work with two key regional partners: Humain, an AI company backed by the Saudi government, and G42, a tech conglomerate based in the emirate of Abu Dhabi.
- Nvidia will ship 18,000 GB300 AI chips to Humain for use in data centers. In addition, it will supply several hundred thousand more GPUs to Humain in the coming five years.
- AMD and Humain agreed to invest $10 billion jointly in AI data centers over the next five years. Humain will use AMD’s AI stack including Instinct GPUs and Epyc CPUs. The precise number of chips was not disclosed.
- Amazon and Humain will build a $5 billion “AI Zone” that features AI infrastructure, servers, networks, and training programs supplied by Amazon Web Services.
- Google, IBM, Oracle, Qualcomm, Salesforce, and others announced a combined $80 billion investment in Humain.
- In February, Saudi Arabia committed to spend $1.5 billion on Groq inference chips. Groq plans to expand its data center in the Saudi city of Dammam.
Behind the news: Earlier this month, the Trump administration rescinded restrictions on advanced chips that had been imposed in January by then-President Biden.
- The Biden Administration had limited exports of AI chips and proprietary models to most countries. Exports to allies and trade partners including India, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, and the UAE initially were tightly limited through the first quarter of 2025 and due to increase somewhat by 2027. The ban blocked access to chips for China, Iran, Russia, and others.
- Although the Trump Administration rejected the Biden-era framework, it has ratcheted up limits on China. That effort has met with mixed results. For instance, China’s Alibaba and DeepSeek have continued to build leading models despite restrictions on exports of U.S. chips.
- Some U.S. business and government leaders worry that allowing sales of advanced chips to countries with close ties to China opens a path for Chinese companies to acquire them. Others argue that restricting chip sales to these countries would encourage them to buy from Chinese chip makers, potentially weakening their relationships with the U.S. and increasing their reliance on technology made in China.
Why it matters: Although these deals relax U.S. efforts to limit access to advanced AI, they are likely to expand U.S. influence in the Middle East while helping Saudi Arabia and the UAE diversify their oil-based economies. They also strengthen the technological prowess of Saudi Arabia relative to its arch rival Iran and tie the region’s AI progress to the U.S. at the expense of China. Locally, the immense investments will fuel homegrown technology development, building on the UAE’s achievement with its Falcon large language model and Saudi Arabia’s aspiration to become a global AI hub.
We’re thinking: Residents of Saudi Arabia and the UAE stand to benefit from better AI infrastructure, models, and services. As China explores exporting its homegrown chips, the U.S. effort to encourage more nations to use its chips makes sense for the country.