President Donald Trump has hailed deepening ties between the United States and the United Arab Emirates and said that the latter will invest $1.4 trillion in the former’s artificial intelligence sector over the next decade.
“I have absolutely no doubt that the relationship will only get bigger and better,” Trump said on Thursday at a meeting with UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, on the final leg of his three-country tour of the Gulf region that saw him strike a series of lucrative tech, business and military deals that he said amounted to $10 trillion.
Sheikh Mohammed said the UAE remained “committed to working with the United States to advance peace and stability in our region and globally”.
The deal with UAE is expected to enable the Gulf country to build data centres vital to developing artificial intelligence models. The countries did not say which AI chips could be included in UAE data centres. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang had earlier been seen in conversation with Sheikh Mohamed and Trump.
The AI agreement “includes the UAE committing to invest in, build, or finance U.S. data centres that are at least as large and as powerful as those in the UAE,” the White House said.
Reporting from Doha in Qatar, Al Jazeera’s Hashem Ahelbarra said such a deal had been “a national security concern” for Washington in the past. “But then they decided to change their mind under Trump, particularly when the UAE said that it was willing to invest $1.4 trillion,” he said.
Ahelbarra said the deal was a “significant step” for the UAE, positioning it as “the most important player in artificial intelligence, followed by Saudi Arabia”.
Before his departure for the UAE, Trump said in a speech to US troops at the Al Udeid Air Base southwest of Doha in Qatar that defence purchases signed by Qatar on Wednesday were worth $42bn.
Other agreements signed during Trump’s four-day swing through the Gulf include a deal for Qatar Airways to purchase up to 210 Boeing widebody jets, and a commitment from Saudi Arabia to invest $600bn in the US and to buy $142bn worth of US arms.
The tour also brought a flurry of diplomacy, with Trump saying in Qatar on Thursday that the US was getting close to securing a nuclear deal with Iran. On Tuesday, he said the US would remove longstanding sanctions on Syria.
Trump said he would probably return to Washington on Friday, although he said it was “almost destination unknown because they’ll be getting calls ‘Could you be here? Could you be there?’”
Trump had previously hinted that he could stop in Istanbul for talks on the Russia-Ukraine war.
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