After Trump’s tour to the Middle East, they’re relieved of worries about shipping products to the region

Artificial intelligence (AI) chip makers in the United States have complained in recent years about Washington’s chip export ban against China, but they are less grumbly now as they see rising opportunities in the Middle East.

On a trip to the Middle East on May 13, US President Donald Trump was welcomed by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman. Both sides agreed to boost their cooperation in AI development.

Trump said Saudi Arabia’s DataVolt plans to invest $20 billion in AI data centers and energy infrastructure in the US. At the same time, Google, DataVolt, Oracle, Salesforce, AMD and Uber are committing to invest $80 billion in cutting-edge transformative technologies in both countries.

The same day, the US Commerce Department said its Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) will not enforce the AI diffusion rule. That rule dates from January, when the Biden administration announced US companies, such as Nvidia and AMD, were required to apply for export licenses if they ship high-end AI chips to foreign countries other than 18 US allies.

“The good news about the US is that the administration has changed,” Mohsen Moazami, President (International) at Groq, and an Iranian-American entrepreneur, who joined Trump’s recent tour to Saudi Arabia, told Asia Times in an interview on the sidelines of a London event called AI Rush on May 16. “The administration has changed, and therefore the mind has changed.”

American AI chipmakers’ eyes are on Saudi Arabia now, not China