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Preliminary agreement would allow US chip imports
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Gulf region aims to become among top three global AI
centers
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President to visit US troops in Middle East
By Gram Slattery, Andrew Mills and Federico Maccioni
DOHA, May 15 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump was
due to end a brief trip to Qatar with a speech to U.S. troops on
Thursday then fly to the United Arab Emirates, where leaders
hope for U.S. help to make the wealthy Gulf nation a global
leader in artificial intelligence.
The U.S. has a preliminary agreement with the UAE to allow
it to import 500,000 of Nvidia's ( NVDA ) most advanced AI chips
a year, starting this year, Reuters reported on Wednesday.
The deal would boost the country's construction of data
centers vital to developing artificial intelligence models. But
the agreement has provoked national security concerns among
sectors of the U.S. government, and the terms could change,
sources said.
A string of business agreements has been inked during
Trump's four-day swing through the Gulf region, including a deal
for Qatar Airways to purchase up to 210 Boeing widebody jets, a
$600 billion commitment from Saudi Arabia to invest in the U.S.
and $142 billion in U.S. arms sales to the kingdom.
The trip has also brought a flurry of diplomacy. Trump made
a surprise announcement on Tuesday that the U.S. will remove
longstanding sanctions on Syria and subsequently met with Syrian
interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa.
On Thursday, Trump will address U.S. troops at the Al Udeid
Air Base, which is in the desert southwest of Doha and hosts the
largest U.S. military facility in the Middle East. He then flies
to Abu Dhabi to meet with UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin
Zayed Al Nahyan and other leaders.
AI is likely to be a focus for the final leg of Trump's
trip.
Former President Joe Biden's administration had imposed
strict oversight of exports of U.S. AI chips to the Middle East
and other regions. Among the Biden administration's fears were
that the prized semiconductors would be diverted to China and
buttress Beijing's military strength.
Trump has made improving ties with some Gulf countries a key
goal of his administration. If all the proposed chip deals in
Gulf states, and the UAE in particular, come together, the
region would become a third power center in global AI
competition after the United States and China.
Trump had dangled the possibility of making a side trip to
Turkey to join Russia-Ukraine talks before returning to
Washington, but a U.S. official said on Wednesday that the
president would not make that stop.
(By Gram Slattery and Andrew Mills in Doha and Federico
Maccioni in Abu Dhabi; Additional reporting by Yousef Saba,
Karen Freifeld and Hadeel Al Sayegh; Editing by Colleen Jenkins
and Cynthia Osterman)