Trump helped build the Middle East’s AI ambitions. Could his war break them?

Hong Kong/New York —  President Donald Trump arrived in the Middle East last spring, making deals that would vault the Gulf into the global race for artificial intelligence.Accompanied by an entourage of Big Tech CEOs during the trip from OpenAI’s Sam Altman to Amazon’s Andy Jassy, Trump hailed a region «forging a future where the Middle East is defined by commerce, not chaos» at an address in Riyadh.Nine months later, the Iran conflict has led to drone and missile strikes on data centers in the UAE and Bahrain, disrupting critical cloud infrastructure, knocking some digital services offline, and throwing the American president’s vision — as well as the Gulf region’s AI ambitions — into question.Countries including the UAE and Saudi Arabia have bet heavily on AI to diversify and transform their oil-reliant economies. And American tech giants like Amazon, OpenAI and Microsoft see the Gulf states’ abundant and cheap energy and vast land as key to their AI infrastructure buildouts.But an extended war could change that calculus, analysts warned."If it goes on for a couple months, I think you have to reassess just about everything,« said Paul Meeks, head of technology research at investment bank Freedom Capital Markets.A post-oil planSaudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and beyond count AI as a core pillar of their post-oil economic strategies, positioning themselves as AI superpower contenders in a heated global race.The ambition has begun to bear fruit. With tens of billions committed to AI infrastructure like data centers and partnerships with leading global tech firms, Gulf countries have surged in funding and readiness rankings.
Last August, research and advisory firm Gartner projected that the technology spending by Middle East countries would reach 155 $ billion in 2025, with 9.5 $ billion allocated to data center investments — a nearly 70% jump from the previous year.As part of the deals Trump helped broker last year, Amazon, Nvidia and others struck multibillion dollar partnerships with Saudi Arabia’s state-backed AI startup Humain to build „AI factories.“ In the UAE, Trump inked deal with the country to build the largest data center complex outside the US in Abu Dhabi.
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