Rumor has it that the US is close to reaching an agreement to allow the UAE to import millions of Nvidia (NVDA.US) AI chips every year

The Zhitong Finance App learned that foreign media quoted people familiar with the matter as saying that the US has reached a preliminary agreement with the UAE to import 500,000 advanced Nvidia (NVDA.US) artificial intelligence chips every year starting this year. The potential agreement will be valid until at least 2027, and there is a possibility that it will be extended until 2030.

According to the report, the draft agreement stipulates that 20% of the chips (or 100,000 pieces per year) will be supplied to UAE artificial intelligence startup G42, and the rest will be distributed to companies with large-scale AI businesses in the US, such as Microsoft (MSFT.US) and Oracle (ORCL.US) — these companies may also plan to build data centers in the UAE.

Nvidia declined to comment when the news first came to light on Tuesday. Microsoft, Oracle, the White House, and G42 did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Currently, the agreement is still under discussion, and changes may still occur before finalization. According to some sources, this part of the agreement, which has been previously reported, is facing increasingly strong opposition from within the US government in the past day.

The report mentioned that the preliminary agreement also aims to promote data center construction in the US, stipulating that every time G42 builds a new data center in the UAE, it must simultaneously build a similar facility in the US. The agreement added that the definition of an “advanced AI chip” will be clarified by an independent working group set up later along with security requirements.

The report points out that the proposed chip is the most advanced graphics processing unit (GPU). According to reports, currently, this may refer to Nvidia's Blackwell chip with better performance than the previous generation Hopper chip, or it may also be Nvidia's upcoming Rubin chip that surpasses the previous two generations.

On Tuesday, foreign media reported that during the validity period of the agreement, the computing power that G42 can purchase is equivalent to about 1 million to 1.5 million Nvidia H100 chips. This amount is about four times the amount of chip export rules allowed during the Biden administration. This rule is called the spread of AI, and the Trump administration plans to abolish this rule.

US President Donald Trump is visiting the Middle East this week and announced on Tuesday that he has received commitments worth $600 billion from Saudi Arabia, including an agreement to purchase a large number of chips from Nvidia, AMD (AMD.US), and Qualcomm (QCOM.US).