The Trump administration is considering a deal that could send hundreds of thousands of U.S.-designed artificial intelligence chips to G42, an Emirati A.I. firm that the U.S. government has scrutinized in the past for its ties to China, three people familiar with the discussions said.
The negotiations, which are ongoing, highlight a major shift in U.S. tech policy ahead of President Trump’s visit to the Persian Gulf states this week. The talks have also created tension inside the Trump administration between tech- and business-minded leaders who want to close a deal before Mr. Trump’s trip and national security officials who worry that the technology could be misused by the Emiratis.
The Trump administration has embraced cutting direct deals for A.I. chips with officials from the Middle East, as it looks to strengthen U.S. ties in the region, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the negotiations are ongoing. The approach marks a break from the Biden administration, which had rejected similar A.I. chip sales over fears that they could give autocratic governments with strong ties to China an edge over the United States in developing the most cutting-edge A.I. models in coming years.
In the talks with G42 and officials from the United Arab Emirates, David Sacks, the White House A.I. czar, has been working on an agreement that would give the Emirati firm access to chips with limited oversight. Some of the chips would go to a partnership that G42 has with the U.S. firm OpenAI, while others would be sent directly to G42, one of the people said, adding that a deal is not yet final.
The Trump administration is also expected to announce a deal this week with officials in Saudi Arabia, two people with knowledge of the agreement said. The deal would give the Saudi government and its new A.I. company, Humain, access to tens of thousands of semiconductors and technology support from Nvidia and its A.I. chip rival, Advanced Micro Devices.
The United States began requiring a license for the purchase of A.I. chips during the Biden administration because of their value in helping governments develop military and surveillance technologies.
The Trump administration’s changes have the potential to reshape an arms race among nations, and countries eager to develop A.I. Major chip sales would be a boon for G42, potentially catapulting the Emirati firm to be one of the most powerful A.I. companies outside the United States. It would be a powerful catalyst for the businesses of Nvidia, the world’s leading A.I. chip maker. And it would fulfill OpenAI’s multiyear effort to bring more computing power to the Middle East.
Alasdair Phillips-Robins, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former official in the Commerce Department, said a sale that included hundreds of thousands of advanced chips would risk handing “control of the future of A.I. to countries that have political systems that we shouldn’t fundamentally trust.”
“There’s a reason why these countries are so keen to get these chips, and it’s not purely the financial returns,” he said. “A.I. is going to be the backbone of militaries.”
The White House and G42 did not respond to requests for comment. OpenAI declined to comment.
Mr. Sacks has been in the Middle East for several days working on this and other deals. On Sunday, he posted a photo of himself on social media with Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the national security adviser of the Emirates, who is also chairman of G42, saying they had discussed their nations’ A.I. plans and opportunities.
“The U.S. must make itself the partner-of-choice for our friends and allies — otherwise others will fill that gap,” Mr. Sacks wrote on X, the social media platform.
Sheikh Tahnoon said in a social media post that the discussions were part of strengthening economic ties between the countries. He added that “collaboration in advanced technologies serves as a cornerstone for building a smart, sustainable digital future that meets the aspirations of future generations.”
G42 is at the forefront of an Emirati effort to build an artificial intelligence industry and to lessen its dependence on oil income. The firm is controlled by Sheikh Tahnoon. It includes a $10 billion technology investment fund, an Arabic-language A.I. model, a tech talent platform, a health care company and a genome-sequencing program.
The firm has been clamoring for access to U.S. chips for several years, but negotiations with the Biden administration were slowed by concerns over its ties to China. In previous years, American spy agencies issued warnings about G42’s work with Chinese companies, including the telecom firm Huawei, and warned that G42 could be a conduit for siphoning advanced American technology to China. G42 has denied any connections to the Chinese government or military.
In 2023, a congressional committee wrote a letter urging the Commerce Department to look into whether G42 should be put under trade restrictions because it had partnerships with Chinese firms and employees who came from government-connected companies in China.
Before agreeing to sell chips to G42 in 2024, the Biden administration spent months negotiating security protections and a partnership with Microsoft. Under that agreement, Microsoft managed the chips to train and develop A.I. models, and G42 had permission to sell Microsoft services that use those chips.
But after cutting that deal, G42 pressed U.S. officials for more chips and wanted to be able to operate them directly. Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, also lobbied the U.S. government to approve more chip sales to the region.
Mr. Altman had been working with Emirati officials to expand global computing power because there had been a shortage of it in the United States. He wanted to increase the supply of chips and data centers because he believed it would allow OpenAI to build more powerful A.I. systems.
(The New York Times has sued OpenAI and its partner, Microsoft, accusing them of copyright infringement regarding news content related to A.I. systems. OpenAI and Microsoft have denied those claims.)
MGX, an Emirati investment firm, is an investor in OpenAI. Last year, it joined a group of investors that contributed $6.6 billion to the start-up.
A former Biden administration official said G42 had requested roughly 200,000 A.I. chips for its partnership with Microsoft, as well as at least 500,000 chips by 2026 that would be solely owned and operated by G42. Senior Biden administration officials, even those who were open to cooperation with the gulf states, saw those levels of sales as a nonstarter, the person said.
As Mr. Trump travels around the Middle East this week, he is expected to hail deals made with both governments and companies. The administration is also expected to showcase deals and negotiations across the region by American tech companies, including AMD, Nvidia, Microsoft, Google and OpenAI, according to six people familiar with the plans.
The Trump administration has also announced that it plans to repeal a Biden administration rule that capped the number of A.I. chips that could be sent to certain countries, in favor of direct deal-making with governments.
The Middle East is most likely to be the first beneficiary of this change. Officials from the Emirates and Saudi Arabia have been negotiating with the Trump administration over the past two months to strike agreements that would provide them steady access to A.I. chips, deals which may be announced this week.
