US plans to approve sale of chips to Saudi AI venture Humain
The startup as promised to construct 6.6 gigawatts of computing capacity by 2034
[HONG KONG] The US plans to greenlight the first sales of advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chips to the Saudi Arabian AI firm Humain, sources familiar with the matter said, marking a win for the state-backed venture as Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman meets with US President Donald Trump.
The approvals are expected as part of a broader AI agreement between Washington and Riyadh, said the sources, who asked not to be named discussing a sensitive matter. The accord, which could be finalised as soon as this week, would see the US government look favourably upon a negotiated volume of AI chip export applications for Saudi Arabia, which has needed Washington’s permission for such shipments since 2023, the sources said.
“We are working on that,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office as he met with Crown Prince Mohammed on Tuesday (Nov 18). The deal will involve “certain levels of chips”, the president said. One source with knowledge of the matter said the volume of approvals is expected to be in the tens of thousands of semiconductors, while declining to specify further.
US authorisation would mark a victory for some of the world’s largest semiconductor companies, including Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices, seeking to supply Middle East markets. Humain chief executive officer Tareq Amin said last month that the company plans to deploy as many as 400,000 AI chips by 2030.
The US Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security, which oversees semiconductor export controls, declined to comment, as did Humain. Amin told Bloomberg News last month that Humain was waiting for export permits involving chips from Nvidia, AMD, Qualcomm and California-based chip startup Groq. Nvidia, AMD and Qualcomm declined to comment, while Groq did not respond to a request.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent hinted at a chips agreement after Tuesday’s meeting between Trump and the crown prince. “We are going to partner them with some of the biggest US tech companies. And then there is also a Saudi startup that will be getting a smaller supply of chips that can be built on,” Bessent said in a Fox News interview without naming the company or providing other details.
The bilateral deal follows months of negotiations between the US and Saudi Arabia, which has worked to assuage concerns in some corners of Washington that semiconductors sent to the Gulf nation could wind up benefiting China. The US restricted AI chip sales to China in 2022 and followed up the next year with curbs on some 40 countries viewed as possible avenues for Beijing to access restricted hardware, including Saudi Arabia.
Trump has kept those curbs in place while also pursuing major Middle East AI deals that would involve large chip sales – a negotiation that, for Saudi Arabia, was aided by the kingdom’s promise of hundreds of billions of US dollars in US investment.
Still, US worries about China’s ties to the Gulf nation permeated AI talks between Washington and Riyadh earlier this year, even as the countries touted a slew of corporate partnerships when Trump visited the Middle East in May.
It’s unclear exactly what commitments the kingdom made in the latest agreement – though several sources with knowledge of the accord emphasised that it does have security conditions, including ones related to China.
Riyadh has also made its case publicly. Last year, the head of Saudi Arabia’s new AI investment fund said the country would divest from China if it were asked to do so by the US. Humain’s CEO said last month that the venture had vowed not to purchase equipment from Huawei Technologies, China’s AI hardware champion.
Huawei has been seeking AI chip customers in Saudi Arabia, Bloomberg reported earlier this year, efforts that some Trump officials have cited as evidence of why the US needs to encourage exports of American semiconductors to the Middle East and elsewhere.
Humain, where the Saudi crown prince serves as chairman, officially debuted during Trump’s visit six months ago. Formed by Saudi Arabia’s US$1 trillion Public Investment Fund, the company has become the centrepiece of the kingdom’s effort to capitalise on the rush of money going into AI.
In October, Saudi Aramco, the national oil giant, announced that it has signed a nonbinding term sheet to take a significant minority stake in Humain. The nation’s wealth fund has not disclosed how much it’s allocating for Humain.
During his White House meeting with Trump, Crown Prince Mohammed stressed the importance of AI development to his nation. “AI is critical for us” to keep the Saudi economy growing, he told reporters. The kingdom has “a huge demand of unique computing power”.
“We are going to spend, in the short term, around US$50 billion” on semiconductors, the crown prince said.
Humain has released an Arabic chatbot, an operating system and other AI tools. But the company’s primary sales pitch to Silicon Valley has been Saudi Arabia’s cheap energy to power data centres. Humain has promised to construct 6.6 gigawatts of computing capacity, enough to energise roughly 4.95 million US homes at any given moment by 2034, rivalling the size of OpenAI’s sprawling Stargate joint venture in the US. BLOOMBERG
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