The U.S. government has finally granted Nvidia an export license to ship tens of billions of dollars' worth of leading-edge AI GPUs to the United Arab Emirates, initiating the first stage of a large bilateral technology partnership, reports Bloomberg. However, none of the AI accelerators shipped to the UAE will be destined for Abu Dhabi-based AI outfit G42, but will be operated by American companies that have datacenters in the UAE.
The authorization follows a May agreement allowing the UAE to purchase up to 500,000 advanced Nvidia processors each year (Blackwell for now, Rubin and Feynman in the coming years), while committing to $1.4 trillion of investment in the U.S. over the next decade. Each side is expected to match contributions on a dollar-for-dollar basis. The initial set of permits excludes chips for G42, Abu Dhabi's state-backed AI firm that is developing a 5 GW data center primarily for OpenAI. However, under the terms of the arrangement, G42 will get 20% of AI processors bound for the UAE in the future.
