The US Commerce Department has authorized the sale of approximately 70,000 advanced artificial intelligence chips to Saudi Arabia's Humane and the UAE's G42, in a move that comes hours after Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's visit to Washington.
The Commerce Department said in a statement: Both companies will receive approvals to purchase approximately 35,000 Nvidia Blackwell chips, which are the American company's most advanced chips.
Both Saudi Arabia and the UAE are focusing on enhancing the role of artificial intelligence data centers within their strategies to diversify the economy, as they seek to build advanced server and chip storage facilities.
Saudi-American memorandum of understanding on artificial intelligence
The American move came after the Saudi Crown Prince and US President Donald Trump signed a pivotal memorandum of understanding in the field of artificial intelligence, granting Saudi Arabia access to world-leading American systems while protecting American technology from foreign influence, as part of the visit made by Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said during the White House summit with the US President: We need to use the enormous computing power for the long term to compensate for the shortage of human resources, and we will entrust this task to the American private sector.
He added: In the near term, we will inject $50 billion into chip consumption in the Kingdom, and we need the United States to allow us this level of consumption.
Last May, Saudi Arabia launched Humane, a company that serves as a cornerstone of its artificial intelligence strategy. Humane prioritizes sovereignty in its ambition to develop its own AI infrastructure within the Kingdom. Its CEO, Tariq Amin, stated in a previous interview that Humane's ambition since its founding last May is to make Saudi Arabia the third largest country in the world in terms of AI infrastructure, after the United States and China.
The UAE is ramping up its investments in artificial intelligence.
For its part, the UAE has intensified its investments in the technology and energy sectors in the United States in an effort to obtain the chips necessary for its ambitions to become a superpower in the field of artificial intelligence.
Last March, the White House announced that the UAE would invest $1.4 trillion in the United States over the next decade, following a meeting between President Donald Trump and UAE National Security Advisor Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who oversees a $1.5 trillion empire that includes the G42 Group.
The Bureau of Industry and Security recently granted permission to U.S. companies, including Microsoft and Oracle, to use these critical chips in projects within the UAE. However, previous export approvals did not extend to Emirati companies such as G42.
