The Trump administration is preparing to announce a deal granting Saudi Arabia more access to advanced semiconductors, paving the way for increased data center capacity in the Gulf nation despite concerns from some US officials about its ties to China, according to people familiar with the matter.

The agreement would boost Saudi Arabia’s ability to buy chips from the likes of Nvidia Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc., which are considered the gold standard for training and running artificial intelligence models, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing confidential conversations. President Donald Trump is in Riyadh Tuesday, kicking off a broader Middle East trip, and he could announce the deal as soon as this week.

But while the two governments have reached an early-stage accord, they are still hashing out a number of key details, the people said. Front and center are US concerns that China could access chips sent to Saudi Arabia, either through the diversion of physical shipments or by tapping the capabilities of those chips via the cloud. One provision under discussion, the people said, would see the US government control access to data centers that use American chips. It’s not clear under what conditions, or to whom, access would be granted.

The deal is one of two major AI chip accords that Trump officials are negotiating as they prepare to rewrite US rules governing the export of advanced chips worldwide. Trump may announce the second agreement with the United Arab Emirates later in his trip, Bloomberg has reported.

Taken together, the deals indicate that Trump is much more willing than President Joe Biden to see advanced American technology shipped to the Gulf — a region where he also has major business interests and where sovereign wealth funds have pledged substantial investments in the US.

“We must take aggressive steps to prevent advanced semiconductors from being illegally diverted into China,” White House AI Adviser David Sacks wrote last week in a post on the social-media platform X. “But that goal should not preclude legitimate sales to the rest of the world as long as partners comply with reasonable security conditions.” For more on this, read the full Bloomberg report. It’s NVIDIA that could benefit most as detailed below.  

HUMAIN and NVIDIA Announce Strategic Partnership to Build AI Factories of the Future in Saudi Arabia

A GLOBE NEWSWIRE press release published today states in-par: “HUMAIN, the new full AI value chain subsidiary of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, today announced a landmark strategic partnership with NVIDIA, the world leader in AI computing infrastructure, to drive the next wave of artificial intelligence development.

The two organizations will leverage NVIDIA platforms and expertise to establish Saudi Arabia as a global leader in AI, GPU cloud computing and digital transformation to drive innovation and growth worldwide.

The partnership underscores HUMAIN’s mission to position Saudi Arabia as an international AI powerhouse — combining cutting-edge infrastructure, frontier AI models, immersive digital platforms and human capital development.

HUMAIN is making a major investment to build AI factories in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with a projected capacity of up to 500 megawatts powered by several hundred thousand of NVIDIA’s most advanced GPUs over the next five years. The first phase of deployment will be an 18,000 NVIDIA GB300 Grace Blackwell AI supercomputer with NVIDIA InfiniBand networking.

These hyperscale AI data centers will provide a secure foundational infrastructure for training and deploying sovereign AI models at scale, enabling industries across Saudi Arabia and worldwide to accelerate innovation and digital transformation.

“Our partnership with NVIDIA is a bold step forward in realizing the Kingdom’s ambitions to lead in AI and advanced digital infrastructure,” said Tareq Amin, CEO of HUMAIN. “Together, we are building the capacity, capability and a new globally enabled community to shape a future powered by intelligent technology and empowered people.” NVIDIA’s stock was positively impacted on the news.  

Disclosure: The owner of Patently Apple holds Nvidia Stock