The United States is expected to relax export restrictions, and Saudi Arabia may obtain high-performance AI chips from NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA.US) next year.

Saudi Arabia is optimistic about obtaining high-performance chips from NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA.US), which will enable it to develop and run cutting-edge artificial intelligence models. Abdulrahman Tariq Habib, a senior official at the Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority (SDAIA), said in an interview on Thursday that Saudi Arabia expects to make progress in this area next year. Speaking at the Saudi International Artificial Intelligence Summit (GAIN) held in Riyadh this week, Habib, Deputy CEO of Strategic Management at SDAIA, said, "I think within the next year." This expectation comes as strict U.S. export controls have so far prevented chip exports to Saudi Arabia. Habib said that obtaining these chips would be "significant" for Saudi Arabia in this case, Saudi Arabia is expected to acquire the NVIDIA Corporation H200 chip, the company's most powerful chip, used to drive the incredibly powerful OpenAI AI model GPT-4o and other large models. "This will ease trade between Saudi Arabia and the United States," he said. "It will also open many doors for the Kingdom's computational capacity building. But most importantly, it's not just about computational power. In the past three years, we have made a lot of efforts in capacity building, personnel skills, and data skills. Therefore, we are collaborating with the international community to contribute to being one of the most active countries in data analytics." Saudi Arabia is investing heavily in developing a robust artificial intelligence ecosystem. According to a report from SDAIA, Saudi Arabia aims to have artificial intelligence account for 12% of its GDP by 2030. This investment will be led by the Kingdom's $925 billion Public Investment Fund, as revealed in the report released on September 9. These efforts are part of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's "2030 Vision," an initiative aimed at modernizing the Saudi economy and diversifying its income away from reliance on oil. In March of this year, market rumors suggested that the PIF was in talks with U.S. venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and other potential companies to create a $40 billion fund to invest in artificial intelligence. U.S. Chip Export Restrictions Habib noted that the U.S. government is considering relaxing export regulations to allow Saudi Arabia to access high-performance chips, a sign of active collaboration between Riyadh and Washington in the field of artificial intelligence. "This shows our cooperation and work with the entire international organization, particularly the United States," he said. "It also indicates that Saudi Arabia is an emerging powerhouse in artificial intelligence, investment, and product manufacturing, just like the United States." The Biden administration has implemented a series of restrictions on chip exports over the past two years to prevent China from accessing these products. In May of this year, the U.S. expanded these restrictions, requiring companies to obtain special licenses from the U.S. government to export advanced semiconductors and chip manufacturing materials to many Middle Eastern countries, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.