As President Trump tours the Middle East this week, governments that are flush with oil wealth will be focused on a different treasure, found in America’s Silicon Valley.
Artificial intelligence chips, which are made by U.S. companies like Nvidia and AMD, are highly coveted by governments across the Middle East. Leaders of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates want to pour billions of dollars into the construction of data centers to put their countries at the forefront of a new technology heralded for its power to disrupt businesses and create trillions of dollars in economic value.
The Gulf States have plenty of energy and cash to build data centers, which house the supercomputers that run A.I. systems. But they need U.S. government approval to buy the American-designed chips to power them. The Biden administration had been wary of allowing such purchases. But the Trump administration appears more interested in using A.I. chips to secure strategic bonds in a region where Mr. Trump has deep financial and business ties.
The technology is expected to be the focus of much deal making during the president’s trip. Officials from the U.A.E. and Saudi Arabia are likely to try to strike agreements with the Trump administration to obtain steady access to A.I. chips in the years to come. And the Trump administration is expected to showcase deals and negotiations across the region by American tech companies, including AMD, Nvidia, Microsoft, Google and OpenAI, according to half a dozen people familiar with the plans.
Tech executives including Jensen Huang of Nvidia, Sam Altman of OpenAI, Lisa Su of AMD and Ruth Porat of Alphabet are scheduled to travel to the Middle East, with some rubbing shoulders with Saudi ministers and White House officials at an investment forum that will focus partly on partnerships in A.I. and data centers.
The United States began regulating A.I. chips systematically during the Biden administration, because of their value in helping governments develop military and surveillance technologies. While many Trump officials are also concerned about the national security implications of selling A.I. chips abroad, some are more willing than their predecessors to deploy the chips as a broader source of leverage globally, potentially playing into trade talks and other negotiations.
Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary who is in charge of trade and technology controls, has floated the idea of linking countries’ access to A.I. chips with trade negotiations, according to a person familiar with his proposals. And as Trump officials carry out trade talks around the world, governments like India and Israel have discussed their desire for more access to American A.I. chips, people familiar with the discussions say.
Those conversations, while still nascent, raise questions about whether the Trump administration will capitalize on global interest in A.I. technology to benefit the United States. The president heads to the Middle East intending to shore up stability in the region, keep oil prices low and secure investment in the United States from governments flush with cash.
Gulf States have offered Mr. Trump the kind of high-figure investments he likes to publicize. In January, Saudi Arabia proposed investing $600 billion in the United States over the next four years. And during a visit to Washington in March, U.A.E. officials dined with Vice President JD Vance and committed to investing $1.4 trillion in the United States over the next decade, including in A.I. and semiconductors.
Mr. Trump’s family has also continued to benefit from business deals in the region, including investments in Trump-affiliated cryptocurrencies. On Sunday, a senior official with knowledge of the matter said that Mr. Trump planned to accept a luxury Boeing 747-8 plane as a donation from the Qatari royal family that will be upgraded to serve as Air Force One, in possibly the biggest foreign gift ever received by the U.S. government.
The current U.S. dominance over artificial intelligence gives Mr. Trump, who styles himself a consummate deal maker, a unique source of leverage. While China is starting to develop competitive A.I. chips, companies that want to build supercomputers to run chatbots, accelerate drug discovery and develop software must use American technology.
The Biden administration tried to capitalize on America’s monopoly on A.I. technology by first cutting off shipments to adversaries and then trying to control which corners of the world could have access to the tech.
After steadily rolling out limits on sending chips to China and Russia, Biden officials in their final weeks put out sweeping global restrictions on the number of A.I. chips that could be sent to other countries, including those in the Gulf.
The rule was an effort to ensure that the world’s largest data centers would be built by the United States and its allies, rather than in the Middle East or elsewhere. Biden officials were skeptical of the U.A.E.’s and Saudi Arabia’s autocratic tendencies and ties to China. They also argued that the rule would limit China’s access to A.I. chips and data centers in other countries, which could strengthen Beijing’s strategic and military capabilities.
The rule, which was scheduled to take effect May 15, permitted unlimited A.I. chip sales to 18 allies like Britain, Germany and Japan, and blocked sales to China, Iran and other adversaries. All other countries, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, India, Israel and Poland, faced caps on the number of chips they could purchase, and many were not happy about it.
Jim Secreto, a former deputy chief of staff for the Commerce Department, said that the rule aimed to preserve national security and shape the future of a critical technology. Without regulation, the availability of cheap energy and capital abroad might mean that more data centers would be built outside the United States than inside.
“Who controls A.I. is the geopolitical question of our time,” he said.
Companies like Nvidia and Oracle also protested the rule, saying it would backfire on U.S. technology leadership. Trump officials seemed to agree with that argument. On Wednesday, the administration submitted a filing saying that it would publish a new rule that would rescind the previous framework, though it gave no timeline for the change.
“The Biden A.I. rule is overly complex, bureaucratic, and would stymie American innovation,” Ben Kass, a spokesman for the Commerce Department, which oversees technology controls, said in a statement. “We’re replacing it with a simpler, clearer framework that prioritizes U.S. dominance and unleashes the full potential of American A.I. innovation.”
In a post on X, David Sacks, the White House A.I. czar, said the Biden rule had strained relationships with allies and “effectively turned Washington into a central planner for the global A.I. industry” that would have pushed the world toward using non-American technologies.
Some companies have welcomed the shift. By ditching the Biden administration rule, “America will have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to lead the next industrial revolution,” the Nvidia spokeswoman Mylene Mangalindan said.
But some familiar with the Trump administration’s plans say the companies could be celebrating prematurely. Trump officials have been drafting their own rules to replace the Biden ones. They are not yet finalized, but they could be issued in the coming weeks.
After his confirmation, Mr. Lutnick directed his deputies to create a revised rule that would be strong but simpler. According to more than six people familiar with the discussions, Trump officials proposed a system that would scrap the various country groups the Biden administration had set up, and instead allow foreign governments to negotiate directly with the Trump administration on how many chips they could have.
Companies seeking larger chip sales would need to apply to the Commerce Department for licenses, and the focus would be on empowering U.S. companies like Microsoft, Amazon and Google to build data centers abroad at the expense of their foreign competitors.
But in a meeting at the White House in late April, Trump officials raised questions about the new proposal, according to two people familiar with the events. The administration is still debating the rules, and it’s not clear what will ultimately be adopted. A system that depends on government licenses and deals made behind closed doors could be friendlier toward companies, but it might also be stricter in some instances, or create bottlenecks that could slow A.I. deals.
Technology companies have been hopeful that Trump officials will be more open to encouraging A.I. business abroad. But they also worry that Mr. Trump could turn U.S. technology into a bargaining chip in ways that are unpredictable or harmful for their businesses.
In his first term, Mr. Trump displayed a willingness to negotiate on export controls, for example making concessions for Chinese companies like ZTE and Huawei to secure Beijing’s help in negotiating with North Korea and ensuring good will in trade talks with China.
While many of Mr. Trump’s advisers are China hawks who view export controls as a serious national security issue, the president’s general attitude has long been that if the United States has something to sell, deals should go forward, according to three people familiar with his thinking.
Mr. Trump’s trip to the Middle East is the first big test of the administration’s new approach. In preparation for his departure, the administration has been asking tech companies for details of deals they have been negotiating in the region, some of which were begun in the Biden administration, said three people familiar with the talks.
And officials from the Saudi and Emirati governments and sovereign wealth funds have met several times in the past two months with officials from the White House and Commerce Department to discuss the A.I. chip rules. The Emiratis have been pressing for a direct sale to one of their domestic cloud providers, two people familiar with the appeals said.
The Trump administration appears to view Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. as natural allies, seeing them as easier to negotiate with than traditional partners like the Europeans.
But Sam Winter-Levy, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, cautioned that Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. maintain close political and economic ties with Russia and China, have a history of espionage against U.S. citizens and might prove not to be close allies in a geopolitical conflict down the road.
“I would view them with skepticism as close partners in the development of a technology that could shape the balance of power in the next few years,” he said.
Ana Swanson covers trade and international economics for The Times and is based in Washington. She has been a journalist for more than a decade.
Tripp Mickle reports on Apple and Silicon Valley for The Times and is based in San Francisco. His focus on Apple includes product launches, manufacturing issues and political challenges. He also writes about trends across the tech industry, including layoffs, generative A.I. and robot taxis.
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