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President Donald Trump and his United Arab Emirates counterpart have revealed plans to construct the most important group of synthetic intelligence knowledge centres exterior the US, boosting the UAE’s ambitions of changing into a world AI hub.
The announcement got here throughout a Trump go to to Abu Dhabi to fulfill its president, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, and different UAE officers. It was the American president’s third cease of a Gulf tour this week that he says has raised trillions of {dollars} in funding for the US.
AI has been a theme of Trump’s journey within the Gulf, whose monarchies hope the cutting-edge know-how will assist diversify their oil-reliant economies, and whose enormous sovereign wealth funds are eager to again AI initiatives.
The ten sq mile UAE-US AI campus, situated in Abu Dhabi and constructed by Emirati AI firm G42, is deliberate to have 5GW of knowledge centre energy — equal to greater than 2mn of AI chipmaker Nvidia’s newest technology of GB200 chips, specialists say.
By comparability, Elon Musk’s “Colossus” AI supercomputer facility in Tennessee runs 200,000 of Nvidia’s earlier technology Hopper chips.
Whereas solely a 1GW knowledge centre is to be launched within the brief time period, that will nonetheless require 500,000 of Nvidia’s newest chips.
OpenAI is predicted to be one of many anchor tenants of the campus, in keeping with an individual with data of the matter. The deal, which isn’t finalised, could be the corporate’s first in a technique to advertise “democratic AI” by bringing its know-how to US allies.
The group announced plans to develop AI infrastructure with American allies final week and has been exploring offers with various European nations. In addition to increasing the viewers for OpenAI’s instruments, the challenge goals to place AI with “democratic” values into the arms of US companions, partially to forestall them utilizing Chinese language options.
“On the coronary heart of [the] concept was that at a second the place the US AI firms have a lead on this can we see the chance to construct democratic rails on this house,” mentioned Chris Lehane, OpenAI world affairs vice-president, in an interview final week.
Though an essential American ally within the Center East, the UAE is topic to the identical export restrictions as dozens of different nations, because the US has sought to restrict entry to highly effective chips made by firms resembling Nvidia over issues that they’d leak to China.
The licensing course of had slowed down the circulate of superior know-how and annoyed Abu Dhabi’s AI ambitions, which vary from cultivating superior industries to changing into the primary “AI-native authorities”.
However the Trump administration seems to be loosening these guidelines, having formally scrapped a Biden-era licensing regime shortly earlier than it was as a consequence of take impact this week. The regulation would have put a cap on the variety of chips that so-called tier 2 nations, such because the UAE, may import.
“Evidently the Trump administration is considerably extra wanting to encourage AI growth exterior the USA,” mentioned Thea Kendler, former assistant secretary for export administration on the Division of Commerce beneath the Biden administration.
Gulf nations could be on the lookout for “dependable entry” to chips, mentioned Kendler, now a companion at Mayer Brown. “To put money into the extraordinary infrastructure required for an AI knowledge centre, you wish to know that stream of chips — and never simply at present’s chips, however the subsequent technology and the subsequent technology — will be capable to come to you.”
Saudi Arabia and Nvidia struck a deal this week to construct “AI factories” powered by the chipmaker’s newest processors.
UAE officers have labored to persuade Washington that they’re dedicated to partnering with US AI firms over Chinese language ones. G42, the area’s largest AI firm, says it has minimize ties to Chinese language suppliers. Abu Dhabi funds have backed AI initiatives within the US, together with Sam Altman’s Stargate and BlackRock’s $30bn AI infrastructure fund.
The US commerce division mentioned on Thursday the US and UAE had agreed to a partnership framework on AI, and that the UAE was “dedicated to safeguarding superior AI applied sciences by implementing stringent measures to forestall diversion and guarantee managed entry to know-how”. It didn’t say whether or not laws across the UAE’s entry to chips had been modified.
The highly effective computing assets would solely be utilized by “US hyperscalers and authorized cloud service suppliers”, the commerce division added. A White Home assertion mentioned the settlement included UAE commitments to fund, construct or put money into equivalent-sized knowledge centres within the US.
Commerce secretary Howard Lutnick known as the deal “a serious milestone in reaching President Trump’s imaginative and prescient for US AI dominance”.
Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed al-Nahyan, G42’s chair and the UAE’s nationwide safety adviser, mentioned it “strengthen[ed] the UAE’s place as a hub for cutting-edge analysis and sustainable growth”.
The highly effective Abu Dhabi royal had unveiled a UAE pledge to take a position $1.4tn within the US over the subsequent decade throughout a go to to the White Home this yr.
