Has Trump sold out US tech's future?

Big deals to sell chips to the UAE and Saudi Arabia have divided the US government over whether they could be remembered for shipping cutting-edge AI overseas, write Tripp Mickle and Ana Swanson from San Francisco and Washington

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Over the course of a three-day trip to the Middle East, President Trump and his emissaries from Silicon Valley have transformed the Persian Gulf from an artificial-intelligence neophyte into an AI power broker.

They have reached an enormous deal with the United Arab Emirates to deliver hundreds of thousands of today's most advanced chips from Nvidia annually to build one of the world's largest data centre hubs in the region, three people familiar with the talks said. The shipments would begin this year, and include roughly 100,000 chips for G42, an Emirati Al firm, with the rest going to US cloud service providers.

The administration revealed the agreement on Thursday in an announcement unveiling a new AI campus in Abu Dhabi supported by 5 gigawatts of electrical power. It would be the largest such project outside of the United States and help US companies serve customers in Africa, Europe and Asia, the administration said. The details about the chips weren't disclosed, and it's not clear if they could still be subject to change.

As Trump traversed the region last week, the United States also struck multibillion dollar agreements to sell advanced chips from Nvidia and AMD to Saudi Arabia. The United States and Saudi Arabia are also still in discussions on a larger contract for AI technology, five people familiar with the negotiations said.

The AI deals have caused people inside and outside the White House to wrestle with an unexpected question. Is the Trump administration, in its zeal to make deals in a region where Trump and his family have financial ties, outsourcing the industry of the future to the Middle East?