Microsoft Says Commerce Approved Its Licenses to Export Nvidia Chips to UAE
Microsoft has secured export licenses from the Commerce Department to ship advanced Nvidia chips to its data centers in the United Arab Emirates, President Brad Smith said Nov. 3 in a blog post on the company's website.
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Microsoft was the "first company this year under the Trump administration to secure export licenses" to ship chips to the UAE, Smith said, adding that those licenses were approved in September and "based on updated and stringent technology safeguards."
"These licenses enable us to ship the equivalent of 60,400 additional A100 chips, in this instance involving Nvidia’s even more advanced GB300 GPUs [graphics processing units]."
During the Biden administration, Microsoft also received U.S. export approvals as part of its partnership with Group 42, a UAE-based AI company, after announcing plans to deliver its products to the Middle East (see 2407110045 and 2507090032). Smith wrote that his company "was one of the few companies during the previous administration to secure export licenses from the Commerce Department to ship GPUs to the UAE," and that was because of the "substantial work we did to meet the strong cybersecurity, national security, and other technology conditions required by these licenses. These licenses enabled us to accumulate in the country the equivalent of 21,500 Nvidia A100 GPUs, based on a combination of A100, H100, and H200 chips."