Nvidia and Amazon Land Middle Eastern AI Deals Amid Trump Visit
American tech giants are reportedly upping their Gulf State investments amid President Trump’s visit to the region.
The Trump administration has brokered deals for two Middle Eastern allies — Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) — to bolster their artificial intelligence (AI) efforts, Bloomberg news reported Tuesday (May 13).
New agreements with the U.S., expected to be announced in the days ahead, will give the two countries more access to AI chips from Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices, the report said.
But even before any official announcement of deals between the U.S. and its partners, reports began to surface of American firms preparing new projects in the region, Bloomberg added.
For example, Nvidia is set to supply its most advanced artificial intelligence-related chips to Saudi Arabia’s Humain, a company started to advance the country’s AI infrastructure efforts.
Under this agreement, Humain will get “several hundred thousand” of Nvidia’s most advanced processors over the next five years.
Humain and Amazon are also investing upwards of $5 billion on an “AI zone” in Saudi Arabia, the report added. The project will use tech from the Amazon Web Services cloud business to develop a marketplace of AI agents for use by the Saudi government.
In another proposed deal, OpenAI is mulling developing new data center capacity in the United Arab Emirates that could massively expand its footprint in the Middle East, according to sources familiar with the matter. This deal could be announced in time for Trump’s UAE visit Thursday (May 15), Bloomberg said, noting that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is also in the Middle East as part of a larger tour by tech leaders.
PYMNTS explored AI’s potential to transform the Middle East in a report last year after Saudi Arabia established a $40 billion AI investment fund.
“Successful AI development efforts could not only lead to a wave of local creativity and innovation such as new startups, and attracting generation of students to the field, but could spread the resulting prosperity across the region, countering local disbalances and democratizing the knowledge economy to attract the brightest minds,” geopolitical analyst Irina Tsukerman said in an interview for that report.
And projects like Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, boasting more than $900 billion in assets, is working to establish itself as a global AI leader, Bas Kooijman, CEO and asset manager at DHF Capital, said in an interview with PYMNTS.
“The fund could spur innovation, attract global tech partnerships, and accelerate AI adoption across various industries within the region, contributing significantly to Saudi Arabia’s GDP,” he added.
The post Nvidia and Amazon Land Middle Eastern AI Deals Amid Trump Visit appeared first on PYMNTS.com.