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The US has allowed Microsoft to ship the latest Nvidia chips to the United Arab Emirates for the first time, paving the way for the Big Tech group to expand its investment in the Gulf.
US President Donald Trump struck a deal in May with UAE president Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan to build a vast AI data centre campus in Abu Dhabi.
The Middle East has become a key battleground in Washington’s struggle with Beijing for AI leadership.
But Microsoft’s project had been held back by the Department of Commerce’s export controls on the powerful Nvidia chips needed to run the latest AI systems.
Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president, told the Financial Times on Monday that in September the group became “the first company to receive a licence under the Trump administration” to export Nvidia’s AI chips to the UAE.
“You cannot get those export licences unless you’re able to meet the requirements that have been imposed by the US government,” Smith said. “We earned it by satisfying very stringent cyber security, physical security and other security requirements.”
Microsoft now plans to increase its UAE investment from $7.3bn over the past three years, to more than $7.9bn from 2026 to 2029, of which $5.5bn will go on capital spending for AI and cloud infrastructure.
This is a developing story