US closer to greenlighting Nvidia chips for Saudi Arabia, Semafor reports

(Reuters) -The U.S. government is considering allowing Nvidia to export advanced chips to Saudi Arabia, which would help the country train and run the most powerful AI models, Semafor reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The sales of the chips were a main but unofficial topic at GAIN, Saudi Arabia's global AI summit, the report said.

Attendees of the summit, including some who work for the Saudi Data and AI Authority, told Semafor that the country is making efforts to comply with U.S. security requirements to expedite the acquisition of the chips.

The Biden administration imposed sweeping new curbs on AI chip exports last year, in a bid to cut off more avenues for China to obtain them, imposing a licensing requirement on their shipment to the UAE and other Middle Eastern countries.

The Saudi government is expecting shipments of the company's most advanced chips, Nvidia H200s, according to the report. The H200 was first used in OpenAI's GPT-4o, a multimodal platform capable of realistic voice conversation with the ability to interact across text and image.

Saudi Arabia has taken steps to limit its involvement with Chinese firms, while keeping the door open to China should the United States halt the kingdom's access to the most advanced U.S. chips, the report said, citing people with knowledge of Saudi policies.

An Nvidia spokesperson declined to comment on the report.

The U.S. Department of Commerce declined to comment on the specifics but said "export control decisions regarding licenses, entity listings and any future policy actions are the subject of a rigorous interagency process including the Departments of Commerce, State, Defense and Energy".

(Reporting by Juby Babu in Mexico City; Editing by Alan Barona and Shilpi Majumdar)