While American policymakers have debated how to safely develop AI technologies while keeping up with the massive efforts of US rivals, large technology firms are pushing to securely build out AI capabilities in data centers around the globe.
In a first big win under the Trump administration, Microsoft gained permission from the US to ship the latest Nvidia AI chips to the United Arab Emirates, highlighting the importance of that country as a gateway to the Middle East. Microsoft shipped the equivalent of 21,500 NVidia A100 graphics processing units (GPUs) — a basic building block of today's performant AI data centers — during Joe Biden's tenure. The Trump administration recently granted the company a license to export an additional 60,400 equivalent units.
Security is a key part of the equation, especially because the United Arab Emirates is considered a "complex" partner for the US, says Janet Egan, a senior fellow and deputy director in the technology and national security program at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS).
"They have the deep pockets and ambition to focus on building out AI at a massively ambitious scale, yet they are a complex partner because they are an authoritarian regime that is not democratic and still have close partnerships with China as well, including on security issues," she says. "The US is looking to bring [the UAE] closer into the fold of the US orbit and geo-strategic partnerships, but at the same time, has to be very careful about not equipping another nation that might then shift or pivot its interests away from US interests."
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Microsoft is not alone in deepening its relationship with the UAE. In May, five companies — Cisco, Nvidia, OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank Group — partnered with Emirates' AI and cloud services company G42 to build Stargate UAE, a 1 gigawatt compute cluster as part of a planned 5 gigawatt US-UAE AI campus. One gigawatt — the amount of power generated by a nuclear reactor — is enough to power an AI compute center hosting 1 million GPUs, according to reported analyst estimates. The Stargate UAE project aims to have its first phase — a 200 megawatt facility — up and running next year.
Microsoft will have invested more than $7.3 billion in the UAE between 2023 and the end of 2025, said Brad Smith, president of Microsoft, in a Nov. 3 blog post reviewing its UAE investments. He also highlighted Microsoft's partnership with G42 and its planned investment of $15.2 billion in the UAE by the end of 2029.
"While the chips are powerful and the numbers are large, more important is their positive impact across the UAE," Smith said. "We're using these GPUs to provide access to advanced AI models from OpenAI, Anthropic, open-source providers, and Microsoft itself."
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Microsoft declined to be interviewed for this article.
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