Microsoft to invest over $15 billion in UAE, secures US export licenses for Nvidia chips

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By Federico Maccioni

ABU DHABI (Reuters) -Microsoft will invest over $15 billion in the United Arab Emirates in the seven years to the end of 2029 and has the Trump administration’s approval to export Nvidia chips for its data centres there, a senior executive told Reuters on Monday. 

The UAE has been spending billions of dollars to become a global artificial intelligence hub, leveraging its close relations with Washington to secure access to U.S. technology, including some of the world’s most advanced chips.

“The biggest share of (the investment), by far, both looking back and looking forward, is the expansion of AI data centres across the UAE,” Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith said in an interview.

“From our perspective, it’s an investment that is critical to meet the demand here for the use of AI,” he said on the sidelines of the ADIPEC energy conference in Abu Dhabi.

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Microsoft invested $1.5 billion last year to take a minority stake in Abu Dhabi AI company G42, giving the U.S. tech giant a board seat, which is filled by Smith.

G42’s past ties to China, however, have attracted scrutiny in Washington, due to concerns over Beijing’s access to advanced semiconductors, including via third parties like the UAE.

G42 said last year it was working with U.S. partners and the Emirati government to comply with AI development and deployment standards. Smith said G42 had made “enormous progress” in implementing the systems required to comply with U.S. law.

Asked whether the Abu Dhabi firm would obtain direct access to the most advanced U.S. chips, he said he thought that would be “part of G42’s future.”

Smith said in a separate blog post on Microsoft’s website on Monday that licences approved last year by the Biden administration allowed Microsoft to accumulate the equivalent of 21,500 Nvidia A100 GPUs in the UAE, based on a combination of A100, H100, and H200 chips.

The Trump White House in September cleared for export an amount equivalent to a further 60,400 A100 chips, involving Nvidia’s more advanced GB300 GPUs, he said, after the administration revised technology safeguards. 

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The chips covered by the latest approvals have not yet been shipped, but that will happen “in a matter of months,” Smith told Reuters, adding they will be used in its own data centres in the UAE. 

Microsoft will have invested $7.3 billion in the UAE between 2023 and the end of this year. A further $7.9 billion is earmarked to be spent between next year and the end of 2029, including for the ongoing and planned expansion of AI and cloud infrastructure, he said in his blog post.

None of the $15.2 billion investment disclosed on Monday will involve Stargate UAE, the first phase of one of the world’s largest planned data centre hubs. That project, located in Abu Dhabi, was announced during a Gulf visit by U.S. President Donald Trump in May.

(Reporting by Federico Maccioni, Editing by Louise Heavens and Joe Bavier)