President Donald Trump announced a deal Friday clearing the United Arab Emirates to buy top-tier American artificial intelligence semiconductors, pulling the Gulf ally into the U.S.’s fast-growing chip ecosystem.
The agreement — finalized in Abu Dhabi, the last stop of Trump’s three-nation Middle East tour — caps a week of AI-heavy announcements, from Saudi Arabia to Qatar, that could control where the world’s most valuable computing power is built and who has access to it. (RELATED: Trump Cans Copyright Chief After She Warns AI May Not Be ‘Fair Use’)
“Yesterday the two countries also agreed to create a path for the UAE to buy some of the world’s most advanced AI semiconductors from American companies, a very big contract,” Trump told business leaders at the Qasr Al-Watan palace. “This will generate billions and billions of dollars in business and accelerate the UAE’s plans to become a really major player in artificial intelligence.”
“In the UAE, American companies will operate the data centers and offer American-managed cloud services throughout the region,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said in a press release, stressing “strong security guarantees” to prevent any diversion of American-origin technology.
“Thankful for a great week in the Gulf with President Trump,” Lutnick later posted on X. “We secured over $3 trillion in new investments and announced our first AI acceleration partnership. This is just the beginning.”
Thankful for a great week in the Gulf with President Trump. We secured over $3 trillion in new investments and announced our first AI acceleration partnership. This is just the beginning.
— Howard Lutnick (@howardlutnick) May 16, 2025
The Emirati deal is just one in a series of Gulf negotiations. In Riyadh on Tuesday, Saudi-backed startup Humain ordered 18,000 Nvidia chips for a data center and lined up an AMD partnership, a combined $10 billion arrangement; Amazon Web Services pledged another $5 billion for an “AI zone” that will train Saudi government models.
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