Chipmakers Nvidia Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. said today they’ve been given the green light to ship thousands of powerful semiconductors to Saudi Arabia, as part of a deal brokered by U.S. President Donald Trump.
The chips are destined for data centers that will be operated by a company called Humain, which is a new entity backed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.
Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang announced his company’s deal on stage at the Saudi-U.S. Investment Forum taking place in Riyadh today. His appearance came as Trump visited the country to meet with Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud (pictured).
Representatives of AMD also appeared at the event, saying the company intends to provide thousands of its own chips and software for Humain’s data centers.
Humain, which was launched on Monday, is planning to become an artificial intelligence hub for the Middle East region, and to do that it needs to build dozens of data centers — hence the need for Nvidia’s and AMD’s advanced chips. The deals were made possible after the Trump administration lifted restrictions on the export of more sophisticated semiconductors to Saudi Arabia.
Aside from building AI infrastructure, Humain will also develop Arabic versions of large language models to serve as the foundation for new generative AI applications. Humain CEO Tareq Amin said the company hopes to build 1.9 gigawatts’ worth of data centers by 2030.
Shares of Nvidia rose more than 6% as the market reacted to the deal. The company’s stock had been down more than 8% in the year to date. AMD’s stock was also up, rising almost 5%.
The chipmakers are trying to expand their customer bases for AI accelerators, which power the vast majority of AI models in the world today. At present, the bulk of their graphics processing units are snapped up by a relatively small group of data center operators, including Amazon Web Services Inc., Microsoft Corp., Google LLC and Oracle Corp.
Nvidia said Humain is looking to build a number of “AI factories” that will span the Middle East region, with a projected capacity of up to 500 megawatts per facility. It will acquire “several hundred thousand” Nvidia processors over the next five years, with the first shipment involving 18,000 of its most powerful GB300 Grace Blackwell chips, as well as Nvidia’s InfiniBand networking technology.
“Together with Humain, we are building AI infrastructure for the people and companies of Saudi Arabia to realize the bold vision of the Kingdom,” Huang said at the event.
The initiative is part of Crown Prince Mohammed’s long-term vision to transform Saudi Arabia into a technology hub as he attempts to shift its economy away from its dependence on oil revenues. The country has already attracted significant investment from U.S. tech firms after mandating that the personal and financial data of its citizens is stored locally. Last year, AWS announced plans to invest $10 billion on Saudi-based data centers, while Google and Oracle also plan to expand their presence in the country.
AMD remains in a distant second place to Nvidia in terms of AI accelerator sales, but it seems to have found a big customer in Humain. In a separate announcement, it said the two parties will invest up to $10 billion to build 500 megawatts of AI compute capacity in Saudi Arabia, as part of an “AI superstructure.”
Meanwhile, AWS was also present at the event, saying it plans to work with Humain to invest “$5 billion-plus” in a new “AI Zone” in the country. That’s in addition to a separate $5.3 billion investment to build a new AWS region that will come online in 2026.
The AI Zone will be made up of dedicated AI infrastructure, including servers and networks, and will cater to Saudi Arabian companies including Humain, which has made a commitment to use AWS’s technologies.
Also today, the Trump administration is said to be considering a separate deal that would allow the United Arab Emirates to acquire more than one million of Nvidia’s most advanced chips. Bloomberg cited people with knowledge of the matter as saying the terms of the agreement are still under discussion, and could see the UAE import 500,000 chips per year until 2027.
About a fifth of the chips would be destined to the Abu Dhabi-based AI firm G42, with the remainder going to U.S. firms looking to build data centers in the country. OpenAI could be one of those companies, the report added.
Image: Humain
Your vote of support is important to us and it helps us keep the content FREE.
One click below supports our mission to provide free, deep, and relevant content.
Join our community on YouTube
Join the community that includes more than 15,000 #CubeAlumni experts, including Amazon.com CEO Andy Jassy, Dell Technologies founder and CEO Michael Dell, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, and many more luminaries and experts.
THANK YOU
