US President Donald Trump has embraced expanding ties between the United States and the United Arab Emirates and declared that the latter would invest $1.4 trillion in the former’s artificial intelligence sector over the course of a decade.
“I have no doubt whatsoever that the relationship will only get bigger and bigger,” Trump said in a meeting with UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, on the final leg of his three-country swing through the Gulf region where he signed a series of multi-billion-dollar tech, business and military agreements that he estimated at $10 trillion.
Sheikh Mohammed further said that the UAE remained “committed to working together with the United States to achieve peace and stability in our region and throughout the world”.
The deal with UAE is expected to permit the Gulf state to build data centres that are essential to train artificial intelligence models. The countries did not say which AI chips could be placed in UAE data centres. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was earlier seen talking with Sheikh Mohamed and Trump.
The AI agreement “includes the UAE agreeing to invest in, build, or finance U.S. data centers that are at least as big and as powerful as those in the UAE,” the White House said.
Al Jazeera’s Hashem Ahelbarra, reporting from Doha in Qatar, said that such a deal had once been “a national security issue” for Washington. “But then they changed their mind under Trump, especially when the UAE made it clear that it was willing to invest $1.4 trillion,” he said.
Ahelbarra said the deal was a “big jump” for the UAE, which was “the most important player in artificial intelligence, second only to Saudi Arabia”.
Before leaving for the UAE, Trump said in a speech to US soldiers at the Al Udeid Air Base southwest of Doha in Qatar that Qatar defence sales signed on Wednesday totaled $42bn.
Other agreements signed during Trump’s four-day visit to the Gulf include an agreement by Qatar Airways to purchase up to 210 Boeing widebody jets, and an agreement by Saudi Arabia to invest $600bn in the US and buy $142bn in US arms.
The visit was also a flurry of diplomacy, with Trump saying in Qatar on Thursday that the US was close to reaching a deal on a nuclear agreement with Iran. On Tuesday, he said the US would remove long-running sanctions on Syria.
Trump said he would probably return to Washington on Friday, although he said it was “almost destination unknown because they’ll be getting calls ‘Could you be here? Could you be there?'”
Trump had previously said that he could stop in Istanbul to talk about the Russia-Ukraine war.