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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)