Nvidia’s huge deal with AI startup Humain puts Saudi Arabia at ‘the front of the line’ of global chip customers, Dan Ives says

• Chipmaker Nvidia will give Saudi AI startup Humain 18,000 of its most advanced semiconductors, strengthening U.S.’s tech ties with the Mideast region. Wedbush analyst Dan Ives told Fortune the deal gives Saudi Arabia the leg up on China and moves Humain to the "front of the line" for AI partnerships with the U.S.

The U.S.’s chip deal with Saudi Arabia is a “watershed” moment in global AI, according to Dan Ives, managing director at Wedbush Securities, giving the Middle East region a massive advantage over China in the AI race.

Humain will receive 18,000 cutting-edge Blackwell chips from Nvidia, the chipmaker’s CEO Jensen Huang announced Tuesday at the Saudi-U.S. Investment Forum in Riyadh. Chip designer AMD, a close rival of Nvidia in AI accelerators, signed a $10 billion collaboration with Humain to provide 500 megawatts of AI compute capacity for its data centers. Amazon and Cisco also penned partnerships with Humain this week.

“I am so delighted to be here to help celebrate the grand opening, the beginning of Humain,” Huang said at the forum. “It is an incredible vision, indeed, that Saudi Arabia should build the AI infrastructure of your nation so that you could participate and help shape the future of this incredibly transformative technology.”

Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman announced on Monday the creation of Humain, a state-backed AI venture. Humain’s deal with Nvidia not only represents the next steps in President Donald Trump’s mounting efforts to court Middle East countries, but also elevates Nvidia’s role in global AI development. The thousands of semiconductor chips Humain will receive are Nvidia’s newest and most powerful, introduced only in March.

Nvidia’s share price is up more than 9% since Tuesday morning. The company declined Fortune’s request for comment.

To be sure, U.S. customers like Alphabet and Amazon will remain a priority for Nvidia above new Mideast customers, Ives said, particularly as Big Tech expects to spend $320 billion on AI and data center investments in 2025. But Saudi Arabia will get preferential treatment over other countries besides the U.S. when it comes to chip deals.

“This puts them to the front of the line,” Ives told Fortune. “It's a red-carpet rollout. It's a region that ultimately could add a trillion dollars to the market opportunity for AI over the next decade.”

“With China still a tenuous situation, I think it's a watershed moment,” he added.

China is the ‘big loser’

The slew of new collaborations between U.S. tech and Humain comes as the U.S. Department of Commerce announced on Monday it would end the “AI diffusion” rule, a Biden-era policy restricting how many U.S.-made semiconductor ships were permitted to be sent overseas by requiring special government approval. The Trump administration said it “will pursue a bold, inclusive strategy to American AI technology with trusted foreign countries around the world, while keeping the technology out of the hands of our adversaries.”

Nvidia, as well as Microsoft and Oracle, were outspoken in opposing the rule, arguing it stifled global economic growth.

While Humain receives 18,000 of Nvidia’s newest chips, China has had to settle for Nvidia’s H20 chips, which were created specifically to circumvent export controls, but lack the same firepower as their Blackwell counterparts.

“China is the big loser,” Ives said, not only because it has inferior chips, but because Saudi’s new deal will complicate ongoing trade negotiations between China and the U.S.

While the Trump administration gave Humain and United Arab Emirates-based AI company G42 increased access to advanced AI chips made in the U.S., it also cracked down on China-made chips. The Commerce Department’s announcement also stated that “using Huawei Ascend chips anywhere in the world violates U.S. export controls.” 

Huawei, Nvidia’s closest semiconductor chip rival in China, has thrived despite previous U.S. sanctions. The company reported a 22% increase in annual revenue for the previous year. But Ives isn’t convinced it will be able to go toe-to-toe with its American competition.

“Nvidia owns the AI revolution,” Ives said. “And everyone knows that.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com