Delays to Trump's UAE Chips Deal Frustrate Nvidia's Jensen Huang (www.wsj.com)

A multibillion-dollar agreement to ship Nvidia’s artificial‑intelligence chips to the United Arab Emirates has been stalled for nearly five months after it was signed, frustrating CEO Jensen Huang and some senior U.S. officials. The deal was intended to fast‑track exports of Nvidia’s high‑performance AI accelerators to a close partner, but it has not progressed through the necessary approvals and remains effectively on hold, delaying revenue and strategic deployment plans. The pause is politically and technically significant: proponents including Huang and White House AI czar David Sacks framed such commercial export deals as a cornerstone of a new U.S. tech‑export strategy designed to maintain an edge over China in AI capabilities. For the AI/ML community, delays mean slower international access to the GPUs and accelerators used for large‑scale model training and inference, potential disruption to global research and deployment timelines, and heightened scrutiny of export control and supply‑chain policy as levers in geopolitical competition. The impasse underscores how regulatory and diplomatic processes can materially affect the pace of AI development and commercial adoption.