NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang speaks during a press Q&A during NVIDIA GTC in San Jose, California on March 19, 2024. Image: Megan Crouse/TechRepublic
The partnership was announced as part of a White House tour to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates.
American chip maker NVIDIA will sell 18,000 of its most advanced AI chips to Humain, a newly announced Saudi Arabian AI startup backed by the country’s sovereign wealth fund.
The partnership was announced by NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang on Tuesday during the Saudi-US Investment Forum, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The forum was held as part of a Gulf States tour currently being undertaken by President Donald Trump and multiple US tech CEOs.
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NVIDIA said that its first deployment to Saudi Arabia will mostly be made up of GB300 Grace Blackwell chips, which are among the company’s most advanced AI chips and were only made available earlier this year.
According to the NVIDIA press release, the Blackwell chips will be used in a 500 megawatt data center in Saudi Arabia, which will eventually be “powered by several hundred thousand of NVIDIA’s most advanced GPUs over the next five years.”
His Excellency Eng. Abdullah Alswaha, Minister of Communications and Information Technology, said in the press release, “This lays the groundwork for a new industrial revolution, anchored in advanced infrastructure, talent and global ambition. This is how Saudi Arabia continues to lead as a partner of choice in shaping the future of AI.”
Chip manufacturer Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) also announced a $10 billion collaboration with Humain to build AI infrastructure and data centers in both Saudi Arabia and the United States.
Humain is a new AI company that is established under the Public Investment Fund (PIF) of Saudi Arabia. PIF is one of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world and is controlled by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who announced the launch of Humain at the forum.
Humain is intended to provide a range of AI services and tools in Saudi Arabia. Humain will not only build the data centers and infrastructure that are necessary to support an AI ecosystem, but it will also help to develop advanced AI models, tools, and apps.
The partnership was made possible because of a recent reversal of Biden-era restrictions on US exports of AI chips. The Biden administration instituted the so-called “AI diffusion rule,” which was scheduled to go into effect on May 15; however, the Trump administration has rescinded the restrictions, making international deals like this one possible. NVIDIA and AMD were outspoken opponents of the AI diffusion rule.
During the tour, Trump also announced that Saudi Arabia will invest $600 billion in American enterprises, many of them AI companies and initiatives. For example, Saudi Arabian DataVolt will invest $20 billion in AI data centers and energy infrastructure in the US, according to a fact sheet released by the White House.
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