U.S. approves AI chip exports to Gulf after Saudi Crown Prince visit

US approved advanced sales Nvidia It sent chips to Saudi Arabia’s HUMAIN and the United Arab Emirates’ G42, authorizing state-backed firms to purchase up to 35,000 chips worth an estimated $1 billion.

The approval of these chip exports marks a major reversal for the United States, which had previously opposed the idea of ​​direct exports to state-backed artificial intelligence companies in the Gulf. Export controls were put in place to prevent advanced American technology from entering China through the back door of Gulf Arab states.

Before leaving office in January, former President Joe Biden imposed a final round of export restrictions on advanced AI chips targeting companies like Nvidia in a sweeping effort to keep this cutting-edge US intellectual property out of China’s reach.

President Donald Trump is moving to expand the reach of such advanced technology to “maintain American AI dominance and global technological leadership,” the U.S. Department of Commerce said in a statement. expression It was published on Wednesday.

The U.S. Commerce Department approved chip exports on the condition that government-backed AI teams agree to “strict security and reporting requirements” overseen by the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security.

The export approval follows Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s visit to the Kingdom’s Washington this week. committed to In the US, spending $1 trillion on top of the $600 billion Trump pledged during his Gulf tour in May.

“Even if we don’t get to that point, both sides have a stake in the game,” Afshin Molavi, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, told CNBC’s Dan Murphy.

HUMAIN, Saudi Arabia’s artificial intelligence company backed by the nearly $1 trillion Public Investment Fund, signed a long list of partnerships with Adobe, Qualcomm, AMD, Cisco, GlobalAI, Groq, Luma and xAI at the US-Saudi Investment Forum in Washington DC this week. HUMAIN will work with Elon Musk’s xAI to build a 500-megawatt data center in the Kingdom.

“What we want to do in 2026 is to build capacity in one year equivalent to what the Saudis have built in the last 20 years,” HUMAIN CEO Tareq Amin said at the summit. he said. HUMAIN hopes to position Saudi Arabia as the third largest global AI hub after the United States and China.

Saudi Arabia’s HUMAIN and the UAE’s G42 “have the capital to invest, Nvidia and (relationship) U.S. government,” Kamil Dimmich, partner and portfolio manager at North of South Capital, said in an interview with CNBC’s Dan Murphy on Wednesday.

Dimmich added that G42 and HUMAIN “can use this to build regional infrastructure, and they want to use this infrastructure to become a global computing hub.”

Just two weeks ago Microsoft Obtained export license to UAE for advanced chips. Microsoft’s main partner in the UAE is G42, but the local AI company was conspicuously absent from Microsoft’s announcement until now.