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Nvidia, AMD, others tout AI partnerships with Saudi Arabia
The U.S. tech involvement follows a long-term plan for the country to become an AI hub by 2030. The tech vendors get access to its energy resources, and Saudi Arabia benefits from AI chips.
Nvidia, AMD and other U.S. tech firms have strategically allied with Saudi Arabia.
Early Tuesday, during a trip to the Middle Eastern kingdom with President Donald Trump, Nvidia's CEO and founder, Jensen Huang, revealed that the AI chip giant has partnered with Humain, a new subsidiary of Saudi Arabia's public investment fund.
Humain plans to build AI factories in Saudi Arabia with a projected total capacity of up to 500 megawatts powered by Nvidia's GPUs, in the next five years. The first phase will involve deployment of an AI supercomputer based on18,000 powerful Nvidia GB300 Grace Blackwell chips, with Nvidia InfiniBand networking, the vendor said.
Trump appeared
Humain also plans to deploy Nvidia's Omniverse platform to drive advance its plans for physical AI and robotics using AI-based simulation. Nvidia and Humain said they will upskill and train Saudi citizens and developers in advanced AI, simulation, robotics and digital twin technologies.
Nvidia's competitor, AMD, also revealed it entered into a $10 billion collaboration with Saudi Arabia.
These announcements come as the White House revealed that Saudi data center vendor DataVolt will invest $20 billion in AI data centers and energy infrastructures in the U.S. Moreover, according to the White House, Google, DataVolt, Oracle, Salesforce and AMD will invest $80 billion in technologies in both countries.
Gartner analyst Chirag Dekate said the collaboration of U.S. technology vendors with Saudi Arabia did not originate this week and likely has been in the works for some time. For instance, in February, AI chip startup Groq got a $1.5 billion commitment from Saudi Arabia to expand the delivery of its AI chips to the country. Also, independent U.S. AI chipmaker and supercomputer developer Cerebras Systems earlier forged a deal with Aramco, Saudi Arabia's oil company. Aramco plans to use Cerebras' CS-3 AI supercomputer to develop large language models.
A strategic plan
The investment agreements are part of Saudi Arabia's plans to establish itself as a leading AI hub globally and diversify its economy from oil, its primary income source.
"[The crown prince] has made it his strategic direction for the kingdom to be a major player in the AI space," said James Cooper, a professor at California Western School of Law.
He added that the deals with the U.S. tech companies are part of that plan. "Saudi Arabia's got the vision, they've got the leadership in Mohammed bin Salman, and they've got the budget,” he said, referring to the crown prince and de facto leader of the county. “They can buy great GPUs, and they can buy great tech and attract great talent."
Saudi Arabia's financial resources are not the only thing working in the country's favor. Its energy resources are also at play. Generative AI infrastructure requires a lot of power and energy, and the Middle East is a region abundant in multiple sources of energy, Dekate noted.
"There is a need for energy that … is sufficient to scale data center footprint available, and now you're starting to see a lot of AI supercomputing stacks, and AI supercomputing data centers being built out of the region," he said.
It's not a surprise that Nvidia, AMD, Groq and other hardware vendors are a part of this initiative because they offer innovative technologies such as GPUs, custom-designed ASIC chips and cloud services that Saudi Arabia needs, he added.
While Saudi Arabia stands to gain considerably from the U.S. tech investments and technology. Kashyap Kompella, founder of RPA2AI Research, said Saudi Arabia's "massive energy resources are a key enabler in the AI transformation. "
Nvidia and Saudi Arabia
And the deal between Nvidia and Saudi Arabia reflects a bigger trend, in particular, Kompella said.
"AI infrastructure is the new geopolitical frontier," he said. It shows that Saudi Arabia prioritizes access to the most powerful AI chips and will most likely not be hindered by export tariffs or new export controls on U.S. AI chips, since it appears to support Trump.
Kompella added that the deal also will expand Nvidia's customer base.
"With export controls limiting who can access these chips, Nvidia secures continued demand from a client with both the capital and strategic intent to deploy at scale," he said.
While Saudi Arabia appears to have gained an upper hand in an intensely competitive AI market, other countries in the region are likely to make similar moves.
"We anticipate similar motions in the broader region because there is, frankly speaking, a desire to be the powerhouse of next-generation AI-native experience," Dekate said. "What Saudi Arabia announced today is the first of many to come. It is certainly leveraging leadership class technologies, leadership class cloud scaling and leadership class modeling ecosystems."
Esther Shittu is an Informa TechTarget news writer and podcast host covering AI software and systems.
