Saudi Arabia wants to become a new power in data centers. Nothing is clear that I can do it

Donald Trump has made a unique tour of several countries in the Middle East, and among the agreements that are considered surprising: Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Qatar want to invest billions of dollars in the construction of data centers for ia. The question is whether they will do so.

Chips for strategic alliances. The Biden administration had largely limited the number of advanced chips from which these countries could access, but Trump’s mandate is changing things. As they point out in The New York Times, AI chips seem now to be a useful argument to strengthen relations with countries with this Trump newspaper “has deep financial ties and business. “Qatar already plans donate a Boeing 747-8 which could end up being used as the new Air Force One.

Saudi Arabia on the one hand. Nvidia and AMD have reached an agreement to sell their professional GPUS to Humain. This newly created company – it belongs to the country’s public investment fund – It has the objective to create a large data center in Saudi Arabia. The agreement with AMD raises An investment of 10,000 million dollars in infrastructure in the next five years. Humain will supervise the development of these data centers, while AMD will provide chips and software.

Arab Emirates attached to the other. As indicated In Bloombergthe Trump administration is considering reaching an agreement that would allow United Arab Emirates to import a million Nvidia chips. Eau could thus buy 500,000 of those chips per year until 2027. A fifth would be reserved for the G42 firm of Abu Dhabi.

Saudi data centers. Nvidia, meanwhile, will sell 18,000 Your GB300 chips To Saudi Arabia. This was announced by Jensen Huang on Tuesday, which will contribute clearly to the Humain projects, which propose with data centers with a joint “1.9 GW” power “in 2030. Those 18,000 chips will apparently be part of the” hundreds of thousands “of which the Saudi project will be nourished.

Possible “resale” to China? The United States restricted the sale of advanced chips from AI to China in 2022, and there are those who fear that countries in the Middle East end up serving as intermediaries so that the chips that the US allows you to sell there ends where they should not. G42 theoretically cut ties with Huawei to reach an agreement of 1.5 billion dollars with Microsoft, but the suspicions about the situation persist.

Saudi Arabia and its megaprojects. As points The analyst Ed Zitron, countries of the Middle East such as Saudi Arabia have been talking about all kinds of megaprojects for years, but one thing is their promises and another realities. It occurs with the Jeddah Tower, MUKAABhis Pharaonic airport And of course The Line and his futuristic city, Neom. All these projects still have a long way to go, and this new Saudi ambition, although more “contained” in terms of dimensions, is equally complex for a country without experience in this area.

There is energy … Countries like Saudi Arabia have abundant energy resources and in fact there are A strong investment in solar energy. Its application to provide power to those data centers, yes, it is not so easy, as they are discovering In the United States.

… but no (much) water. The problem is that these data centers dissipate a lot of heat and the desert environment is not exactly the idea for this type of facilities. Extraordinary cooling solutions are needed and the country has scarce water resources. Desalination plants are A pillar of its strategic plan, and innovations may also go into play in the field of refrigeration such as closed circuit systems or Direct liquid cooling.

Image | Neom

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