U.S., UAE agree on path for Emirates to buy top American AI chips, Trump says

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — The U.S. and United Arab Emirates are working on a path to allow Abu Dhabi to purchase some of the most advanced American-made semiconductors for its AI development, U.S. President Donald Trump said from the Emirati capital Friday.

"Yesterday the two countries also agreed to create a path for the UAE to buy some of the word's most advanced AI semiconductors from American companies, it's a very big contract," Trump said while attending the U.S.-UAE Business Council breakfast during the last day of his four-day visit to the Middle East.

The "very big contract" in question could be in reference to a reported preliminary agreement with the UAE that would permit it to import 500,000 of Nvidia's H100 chips per year — the most advanced chips that the American company produces. This would accelerate the desert sheikhdom's ability to build data centers needed to power its AI models.

The UAE has invested heavily in AI infrastructure in recent years with the aim of becoming a global hub for the technology. Central to that goal are U.S. semiconductors, which have yet to reach Washington's Arab Gulf allies due to national security concerns. 

This could become a thing of the past, as the Trump administration plans to rescind a Biden era "AI diffusion rule," which imposed strict export controls on advanced AI chips even to U.S.-friendly nations.

Veteran security professionals and lawmakers, however — along with, reportedly, some members of the Trump administration — have expressed concerns that doing away with these limits could open the door for the sensitive American technology to end up in the hands of rivals like China.

This breaking news story is being updated.