Bloomberg – USA is weighing a possible flexibility of restrictions To the sales of Nvidia Corp. (NVDA) to the United Arab Emirates, according to people familiar with the matter, which said that President Donald Trump could announce the start of the work on a bilateral chips agreement during his next trip to the Gulf.
Nothing has been officially decided, people said, emphasizing that the debate on commercial semiconductor standards for the EAU and other countries is still ongoing in Washington. But the conversations about the modification of the restrictions on the AI chips for the EAU in particular have been gaining strength both in the Department of Commerce and in the White House, said the people, who requested the anonymity to talk about private conversations.
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It is unlikely that any announcement includes specific details about how Eau’s access to chips would change, people said. But a step towards an eventual agreement would be, however, a victory for the state of the Gulf, whose ambitions of AI run the risk of being restricted by the global standards on chips revealed during the last week of the mandate of President Joe Biden. It would also provide a vision of how Trump sees the AI policy for places outside of China, since its administration debates how to proceed with the so -called AI dissemination rule, which established limits to exports of the chips from AI to the EAU and about 100 more countries.
Nvidia actions expanded profits After Bloomberg reported the news, going up more than 5% in New York.
American restrictions on chips now cover most of the world.
Trump plans to visit the EAU as part of a broader trip to the Most of May 13, which means that it will be in the region on May 15, date on which companies must begin to comply with the Dissemination Standard of AI. On that trip, The president plans to emphasize that the EAU are a natural ally of the United States. who has made great investments in this country, according to people.
The president recently questioned why the US cannot sell chips to an approved nation to buy F-35 combat planes, said one of the people, although the Emirate is still in negotiations with the US on the terms of those purchases. Trump’s comments were produced after a meeting with Sheikh Bin Zayed al Nahyan, national Security Advisor of the EAU and brother of its president, who visited Washington in March partly to press for easier access to Nvidia chips.
The spokesmen of the White House and the Department of Commerce did not immediately respond to the requests for comments, while the representatives of NVIDIA and the EAU embassy declined to comment.
During the Tahnoon sheikh, the EAU revealed plans to spend until US $ 1.4 billion during the next decade in energysemiconductors, AI infrastructure and manufacturing in the US that promise accelerated conversations about the modification of the restrictions on the Eau chips, people familiar with the matter said. Weeks later, Silver Lake, which has the sovereign fund of Abu Dhabi Mbadala Investment Co. as an investor, bought a majority participation in Altera, from Intel Corp. (INTC), which also helped to bow things in favor of the EAA, according to an American official.
In the coming months, other investments led by the EAUs in the US technology sector are expected, according to people familiar with the matter. As part of the broader conversations about access to chips, these people said, some Trump officials have raised the search for a greater Emirati investment in Intel, the American chip manufacturer in difficulties found in the center of the US government effort to manufacture more semiconductors in US soil.
-Administration’s discussions on Intel’s inclusion in a possible agreement with the EAU remain internal And in very early stages, people said. A spokesman for Mubadala said he had no knowledge of any discussion relative to Intel, and Intel declined to comment.
On Wednesday, the CEO of Nvidia, Jensen Huang, urged the Trump administration to change regulations for the export of AI technology to help US companies to capitalize on opportunities abroad, where competition with China is intensifying.
“I am not sure what the new diffusion rule will be, but whatever, it really has to recognize that the world has changed fundamentally since the previous diffusion norm was published,” Huang told reporters in Washington. Nvidia has constantly argued that strict export rules of US chips run the risk of pushing other countries towards Chinese technology.
The US government demands a license to export NVIDIA chips to the EAU and other nations of the Gulf since 2023, Given the concern that hardware can deviate to China. The country of the Middle East has been trying to appease those concerns for a long time, even with the promise of the Giant of ABU Dhabi, G42, to disin in Huawei Technologies Co. of China, which raided the way for an association of US $ 1.5 billion with Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) announced during the Biden administration. Microsoft has publicly asked the Trump administration to soften chips export controls to the EAU, among other “American friends.”
Emirati officials were also immersed in advanced negotiations with Biden officials to reach a government agreement to Government on the deployment of AI, according to people familiar with these conversations, which could have helped EAU companies avoid the national limit of chips in exchange for security commitments, which also requires a separate and specific application of the company. But the EAU left those conversations after Trump won the US presidential elections in November, people said, before the norm of dissemination of AI was formally known.
Now, the senior government and industry officials of the country are optimistic about their perspectives under the new administration. The EAU are not seen as “one more actor,” Omar told Olama, Minister of the Country for AI and the digital economy, in a recent interview, pointing out the associations between US companies and Emirati. The director of one of those companies, Peng Xiao, of G42, said that the EAU are making “very good and tangible progress” to achieve advanced semiconductors from the United States.
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Still, it is not clear what way I could adopt. Trump officials have been considering a series of changes in the AI dissemination standard, Bloomberg News reported in March, including the elimination of the stepped system in favor of a more general global license requirement. That could pave the way for individual countries, including EAU, negotiate their own agreements around access to chips, which can be greatly complex.
Meanwhile, Chips shipments to the country require continuous approvals by American officials who maintain divergent opinions on the implications for the national security of the impulse of the EAU to the AI.
With the collaboration of Marion Halftermeyer and Annmarie Hordern.
Read more at Bloomberg.com
