Microsoft said Monday it will ship Nvidia’s most advanced AI chips to the United Arab Emirates under a deal approved by the U.S. Commerce Department.
According to The Associated Press, the Redmond, Washington, software giant said licenses approved in September under “stringent” safeguards allow it to send more than 60,000 Nvidia chips, including the advanced GB300 Grace Blackwell chips, for use in UAE data centers.
The announcement appears to contradict President Donald Trump’s recent “60 Minutes” remarks, in which he said the most advanced chips would not be exported outside the U.S.
“We will let them deal with Nvidia but not in terms of the most advanced,” Trump said. “The most advanced, we will not let anybody have them other than the United States.”
The UAE’s access to the chips is tied to its pledge to invest $1.4 trillion in U.S. energy and AI projects, a sum far exceeding its annual GDP of roughly $540 billion.
The UAE ambassador to the U.S., Yousef Al Otaiba, called the arrangement earlier this year “setting a new ‘Gold Standard’ for securing AI models, chips, data and access.”
Microsoft said the shipments are part of its planned $15.2 billion technology investment in the UAE, which it noted has some of the highest per-capita AI usage worldwide. The company had already secured more than 21,000 Nvidia GPUs in the UAE under prior licenses approved during the Biden administration.
“We’re using these GPUs to provide access to advanced AI models from OpenAI, Anthropic, open-source providers, and Microsoft itself,” the company said.
