struck a deal<\/a> in May with UAE president Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan to build a vast\u00a0AI data centre campus in Abu Dhabi, a project in which Microsoft-backed G42 is a key partner.<\/p>\nBut the Abu Dhabi project had been held back by the Department of Commerce\u2019s export controls on the powerful Nvidia chips needed to run the latest AI systems.<\/p>\n
Brad Smith, Microsoft\u2019s president, told the Financial Times on Monday that in September the group became \u201cthe first company to receive a licence under the Trump administration\u201d to export Nvidia\u2019s AI chips to the UAE.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou cannot get those export licences unless you\u2019re able to meet the requirements that have been imposed by the US government,\u201d Smith said. \u201cWe earned it by satisfying very stringent cyber security, physical security and other security requirements.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The US tech group has not specified where it plans to deploy the latest batch of Nvidia chips. Microsoft needed commerce department approval for exporting the chips it buys from Silicon Valley-based Nvidia to certain countries including the UAE. <\/p>\n
Microsoft last year invested $1.5bn in G42, the Emirati AI company that is building the Abu Dhabi facility announced in May.<\/p>\n
That deal was seen as a critical to America\u2019s efforts to tighten its alliance with the UAE and reduce China\u2019s influence in the region\u2019s AI push. <\/p>\n
The UAE is betting big on AI, putting the technology at the heart of its economic diversification plans and even lawmaking, making the country a leading adopter of AI around the world, according to a recent Microsoft survey. <\/p>\n
The region will also play a vital role in disseminating AI technology through what Smith called the \u201cglobal south\u201d, running from the Middle East and southern Europe to Africa and east Asia.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe run a risk that AI diffusion will become increasingly uneven,\u201d Smith said, which he argued could deepen global economic inequality. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere obviously is a race between the US and China,\u201d Smith said. \u201cPeople often focus for first and foremost on the race for advanced AI model development.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I think the AI diffusion race is probably even more important than the race on the technology frontier,\u201d he added. \u201cAnd this is where the stronger relationship between the United States and the United Arab Emirates becomes critical.\u201d <\/p>\n
The new permits allow Microsoft to make a fourfold increase in the AI computing power that it can deploy in the UAE. \u201cI fully anticipate we will be needing more licences, I would venture within the next six to 12 months, if not sooner,\u201d Smith said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have confidence in our ability to get these licences given the work that we have done to meet the stringent requirements and conditions that the administration quite properly has established,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":268846,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,181,507,74],"class_list":{"0":"post-268845","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=268845"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268845\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/268846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}