Microsoft announced on Monday that it will send Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence chips to the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This move is part of a deal approved by the US Commerce Department.
The software giant, based in Redmond, Washington, said it received licenses in September. These licenses, which include “stringent” safety rules, allow Microsoft to ship over 60,000 Nvidia chips. Among these are Nvidia’s cutting-edge GB300 Grace Blackwell chips, meant for data centers in the Middle Eastern country.
This agreement appears to contradict what former President Donald Trump said in a “60 Minutes” interview aired on Sunday. Trump stated that such advanced chips would not leave the US. Norah O’Donnell asked him whether he would allow Nvidia to sell its most advanced chips to China. Trump firmly said no. “We will let them deal with Nvidia, but not in terms of the most advanced,” Trump said. “The most advanced, we will not let anybody have them other than the United States.”
The UAE’s ability to obtain these chips is linked to its promise to invest $1.4 trillion in the US. eUSy and AI projects. This is a huge amount, especially since the UAE’s total economic output each year is about $540 billion. Yousef Al Otaiba, the UAE ambassador to the US, said earlier this year that this deal “sets a new ‘Gold Standard'” for securing AI models, chips, data, and access.
Microsoft’s announcement on Monday is part of its plan to invest $15.2 billion in technology in the UAE. The company notes that the UAE has one of the highest per-person AI usage rates. Microsoft had already gathered over 21,000 Nvidia graphics processing units (GPUs) in the UAE. These earlier shipments happened under licenses approved during then-President Joe Biden’s time. A company statement explained, “We are using these GPUs to provide access to advanced AI models from OpenAI, Anthropic, open-source providers, and Microsoft itself.”
