The Commerce Department approved US firms to flog as many as 70,000 advanced AI chips to two state-backed outfits in Abu Dhabi and Riyadh, squaring a circle that officials had previously rejected over security concerns.
President Trump has been chewing the ears of both governments about chip access since his May visit and kept the chat going this week with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who he said was a good bloke who he was sure did not arrange the murder of journalists, like the CIA told him.
The agreement allows American suppliers to ship up to 35,000 Nvidia GB300 servers or equivalent kit to G42 in Abu Dhabi and Humain in Saudi Arabia, according to officials. AMD also has a multibillion-dollar deal with Humain on the books.
The package includes guardrails and cybersecurity rules to stop the hardware from drifting into China’s orbit or powering Huawei kit. The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security will keep watch over whether everyone plays nice.
A Commerce Department spokesman said: “These approvals will promote continued American AI dominance and global technological leadership.”
The GB300 systems run on Nvidia’s B300 silicon from its Blackwell range, which remains among the most powerful AI processors available.
The tally matters for both nations, though it remains a modest stash compared with the industry’s gigantic appetite. Elon Musk’s xAI site in Memphis runs more than 200,000 Nvidia chips, and US firms plan to ship hundreds of thousands more to their Middle Eastern server farms.
Musk said Wednesday that xAI, Nvidia and Humain would collaborate on a 500 megawatt data centre, which he said was enough electricity to power several hundred thousand homes for a year.
Experts reckon even this direct flow of chips to government-backed groups is a key national security moment because Chinese operators could try to poke holes in the safeguards. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have deep ties with Beijing.
The exports mark a win for Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang, who has lobbied for months and argued the deals keep the US ahead in the AI race. Last month, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer convinced Trump that even selling a clipped version of Nvidia’s Blackwell processor to China was a step too far.
Microsoft and Amazon stand to gain as well, as they have been waiting ages for similar export licences to enable their own AI hardware to be shipped overseas.
The Trump administration scrapped a Biden-era scheme that restricted chip sales to parts of the Middle East and is preparing new rules to let tech firms ship their boxes abroad with far fewer hoops.
We are confident that the Trump Organisation's partnership with Saudi‐linked developer Dar Global PLC (a subsidiary of Saudi real‐estate firm Dar Al Arkan Real Estate Development Company) on real‐estate/licensing projects in Saudi Arabia has nothing to do with all this.
Likewise, it is unlikely that “Trump Plaza Jeddah”, a $1 billion Trump‐branded development in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, is influencing these chip moves at all, or Trump's interest in licensing deals for Trump‐branded towers in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Apparently, Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner's investment firm, Affinity Partners, has received significant investments from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund, but that cannot have influenced all this rule-bending either.
