U.S. chip curbs in Middle East just ‘business as usual,’ Ooredoo CEO says after Nvidia deal

Qatari telecoms provider Ooredoo told CNBC Wednesday that its new tie-up with Nvidia

is compliant of all U.S. regulations and will still allow it to have access to the latest technology.

Ooredoo earlier this week signed a partnership with Nvidia

, marking the chipmaker’s first large-scale entry into the Middle East market. The companies did not disclose the value of the deal.

The deal will see thousands of Nvidia’s GPUs (graphics processing units) deployed in 26 data centers across Qatar and five other countries: Kuwait, Oman, Algeria, Tunisia and the Maldives. These chips will help the data centers process massive amounts of information, which will feed AI chatbots and other tools, essential components of a country’s AI infrastructure.

The tie-up comes after the United States last year restricted the sale of certain advanced chips to some Middle Eastern nations, over fears the technology could be intercepted by China.

Washington does allow the export of some Nvidia chips to the region, and Nvidia, AMD

and Intel

have all indicated plans to create less powerful chips for export to the Chinese market. The restrictions focus on A100 and H100 chips, not GPUs (another type of semiconductor) which are central to this deal.