Amid a national security review, the U.S. government has delayed granting export licenses to designers of advanced processors for AI workloads, such as AMD and Nvidia, for shipments to the Middle East. The U.S. government is concerned that GPUs for AI and HPC workloads could be resold to China; accessed by Chinese entities in the cloud to train large language models; or used to develop military equipment.
For obvious reasons, this greatly affects businesses of AMD, Nvidia, and other developers of similar hardware, reports Bloomberg.
In October, the U.S. Commerce Department imposed new export rules for shipments of high-performance AI and HPC processors to other countries. The U.S. government now demands companies like AMD and Nvidia obtain an export license when they ship reasonably advanced processors to China, Macau, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, the United Arab Emirates, and some other countries, including those from the so-called Group D:5 [PDF]. Recently, license applications from Nvidia, AMD, Intel, and Cerebras Systems have been delayed or left unanswered.
The U.S. government's strategy includes developing a comprehensive plan for the deployment of advanced chips overseas. This plan involves ensuring proper management and security of facilities used to train AI models. While companies getting processors from AMD, Cerebras, Intel, and Nvidia to equip their datacenters will not resell valuable hardware to Chinese entities (as this contradicts their business model), there are concerns about Chinese companies accessing these processors through Middle Eastern datacenters to train their AI models or even develop military capability.
The UAE and Saudi Arabia are aiming to diversify their economies from oil by becoming leaders in AI. Both countries view U.S.-based companies like Cerebras and Nvidia as crucial partners in this effort. Additionally, Microsoft invested $1.5 billion in the Abu Dhabi-based AI firm G42.
Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries have shown willingness to keep Chinese supply chains separate or divest from Chinese technology entirely. Yet, Saudi Arabia has partnered with China's Lenovo to establish an R&D center in Riyadh.
