Forget Chinese Chips, it’s Silicon in the Sand now

Welcome to AI Collision 💥,

In today’s collision between AI and our world:

• Saudi silicon
• Big tech cash money roadshow
• 90s bedrooms

If that’s enough to get the Middle East buying, read on…

AI Collision 💥

As we’ve covered for some time, there’s a new global arms race underway.

Not for oil. Not for missiles. Not for critical metals.

It’s for AI compute. However, this isn’t really a two horse race.

Well, it kind of is, maybe like a two horse and a pony race. A pony with a lot of money, a lot of influence, and…did I say a lot of money?

The Middle East, meaning Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar, is going all-in on AI. Not just to use it, but to host it, build it, and, eventually, to own a critical slice of its infrastructure.

But they’re not America, and they’re not China. And unfortunately for them, you can’t find AI chips a thousand meters under the desert.

That means if they want to be relevant in the global AI arms race, they need to pick a side (at least publicly) and spend up big.

It looks like they’ve picked that side, and now they’re using their abundant resources (oil wealth) to grow an ever extending list of deals with U.S. tech giants.

Let’s take a walk along the current money trail.

Nvidia, AMD, Oracle, Palantir…it’s a long list

If you haven’t heard of HUMAIN, you will soon enough. It’s the crown jewel in Saudi Arabia’s AI push. A domestic firm backed by the kingdom’s PIF (public investment fund, the massive Saudi sovereign wealth fund) and is also now the recipient of over 18,000 of Nvidia’s newest Blackwell GB200 AI chips. They don’t have them yet, but the order is in. That’s enough to light up a 500-megawatt data center, one of the largest GPU deployments in the world. Not in the U.S. Not Europe. But in Riyadh.

Meanwhile, AMD (often playing catch-up to Nvidia in the AI silicon game) just locked in a $10 billion collaboration with that same Saudi entity, HUMAIN, to co-develop computing infrastructure.

What’s a datacenter without software? Ask Google, who just committed to expanding their role in the Middle East with a $100 million backing of a Saudi venture capital investment fund.

Behind the scenes, Google is already building a next-gen data center in Saudi Arabia with the Public Investment Fund, stuffed with TPUs, GPUs, and the kind of cutting-edge infrastructure usually reserved for Bay Area hyperscalers.

Oracle, too, is deep in the mix. As per it’s annoucement yesterday,

Oracle remains committed to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030, which is now accelerating at lightning speed because of President Trump. The investment of $14 billion over the next 10 years will bring the world’s best cloud and AI technology to the Kingdom, empowering greater innovation and economic advancement.

Also Trump announced a $142 billion arms deal with the Saudis on this tour of the Gulf. Now there’s no concrete reports that say if any of that is going to Palantir, but then again tell me if you think Alex Karp is there and not walking away with a few billion tucked away for Palantir as well?

Then there’s Cisco, Qualcomm, Amazon (can’t forget Amazon) all inking deals, and lining up billions in investment from the Middle East to take American AI to their region.

What makes all of this so remarkable isn’t just the money it’s the chummy relationship that Trump and his administration now seems to have in the Middle East.

The region isn’t trying to invent its own chips or compete on open-source models. It’s not bogged down in bureaucratic panels or political debate on the risks and dangers of AI. Instead, it’s doing what works and what it does best, partnering, paying, and positioning itself as America’s number one AI consumer.

They want U.S. tech, not Chinese. They want the best silicon, not the cheapest. And they’re willing to offer infrastructure, data residency, and capital at a scale few others can.

This isn’t about catching up. This is about buying their relevancy in an AI world.

What it means for markets

For investors, this regional AI gold rush is a god send.

Big Tech valuations are increasingly tied to AI infrastructure scaling. If you thought the first wave of growth came from ChatGPT’s debut or Microsoft’s cloud push, wait until you see what happens when entire governments bankroll 500MW compute centers loaded with U.S. chips.

The Middle East is going all-in on AI. The U.S. companies with the tech are riding shotgun. And the partnerships being forged now in Riyadh boardrooms and Abu Dhabi data parks will define the next 50 years of AI deployment.

Eccentric AI Scientist Releases Shocking Video 

Have you seen this viral video from an eccentric AI scientist? 

He’s one of the original pioneers of artificial intelligence — and even worked on IBM’s Deep Blue before it famously beat Garry Kasparov at chess. 

What he says in this strange video has ruffled a lot of feathers in the tech world — because it calls out the flawed assumptions about how AI actually works — assumptions that could have serious consequences for society. 

Capital at risk 

Boomers & Busters 💰

AI and AI-related stocks moving and shaking up the markets this week. (All performance data below over the rolling week).

Boom 📈

• Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) up 21%
• Micron (NASDAQ:MU) up 20%
• Palantir (NASDAQ:PLTR) up 17%

Bust 📉

• Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG) down 2%
• Veritone (NASDAQ:VERI) down 1%
• Baidu (NYSE:BIDU) down 0.15%

From the hive mind 🧠

• Klarna tried to go all-AI. Didn’t work. Microsoft isn’t going all-AI but they are slashing jobs to make way for it.
• First you have China’s surge to make humanoid robots and get them into the world and into consumers homes…
• And then you have Tesla’s dancing Optimus. Which would you prefer?

Artificial Polltelligence 🗳️

Weirdest AI image of the day

90s teenage bedroom

ChatGPT’s random quote of the day

Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to leave comments and questions below,

Sam Volkering

Editor-in-Chief

AI Collision