The question over the fate of US-made chips in the Gulf has been resoundingly answered in Riyadh — where Saudi Arabia inked billions of dollars worth of semiconductor orders — and as President Donald Trump now makes his way to Doha and Abu Dhabi to cut more deals.
Nvidia will sell its most advanced AI chips to Saudi Arabia’s HUMAIN, and agreed to train thousands of developers as the kingdom looks to build up local talent. The market leader in semiconductor manufacturing may announce yet another blockbuster order in Abu Dhabi, Bloomberg reported.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is spreading his big AI bet: Nvidia rival AMD will also provide chips and software for data centers in both Saudi Arabia and the US in a $10 billion joint venture with HUMAIN, while Amazon Web Services and Riyadh will invest more than $5 billion to develop agentic AI to be used by the Saudi government.
Still, a former senior policy adviser in the Biden administration warned against giving Gulf countries unfettered chip access, writing in Foreign Policy that the risk of leaking sensitive intellectual property to US adversaries “remains very real.” Trump’s AI czar said in Riyadh that the administration will “rescind” the sweeping Biden-era chip caps and plans to work with individual countries directly.
