Saudi Arabia aims to get Nvidia’s advanced chips by next year
Saudi Arabia has set its sights on acquiring Nvidia’s high-performance chips, particularly the H200s. These chips are crucial for operating advanced AI models like OpenAI’s GPT-4, which powers many AI applications today. Nvidia’s latest chips are designed to handle the immense computational demands of machine learning and AI tasks. For Saudi Arabia, gaining access to these chips would open new doors to developing and deploying AI models on a much larger and more efficient scale.
Challenges for Saudi Arabia
In recent years, U.S. export restrictions on high-performance chips have expanded, limiting access to several nations, including Saudi Arabia. These restrictions are rooted in national security concerns, as the U.S. seeks to prevent certain countries from gaining a technological advantage that could pose a threat. For Saudi Arabia, this has been a significant obstacle in acquiring the Nvidia H200 chips, as these restrictions also cover many parts of the Middle East. However, Saudi Arabia expects to have access to Nvidia’s chips within the next year.
Saudi Data and AI Authority (SDAIA) involvement
Abdulrahman Tariq Habib, the Deputy CEO of the Saudi Data and AI Authority (SDAIA), recently expressed the kingdom’s optimism in gaining access to Nvidia’s chips within the next year. The GAIN summit, an international AI summit held in Riyadh, serves as a platform for Saudi Arabia to showcase its growing AI ecosystem and attract international collaboration.
Speaking at the summit, he highlighted that this would be a major step forward for Saudi Arabia’s AI development plans.
Habib stated, “I think within the next year, it will ease business between Saudi and the U.S. It will also open many doors for building the capability, the computational capabilities, in the kingdom. But most importantly, it’s not only the computational capability that’s important. We worked hard in the past three years in building capacity, in human capacity, we also built data capacity as well. So, we are working and collaborating with all the international community and contributing to be one of the top active countries in data analysis.”
Saudi Arabia’s $925 billion Public Investment Fund (PIF) is at the heart of its efforts to build a robust AI ecosystem. The PIF has been in talks with American venture capital firms, including Andreessen Horowitz, to create a $40 billion fund dedicated to AI development.
Saudi Arabia’s ambitions with AI
Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 is an ambitious initiative that aims to diversify the kingdom’s economy away from oil and towards more sustainable sectors, including technology and AI. AI is set to play a critical role in this transformation, with the goal of having AI contribute 12% of the country’s GDP by 2030.
