Nvidia has signed a deal to deploy its artificial intelligence technology in data centers owned by Qatari telecommunications group Ooredoo in five countries in the Middle East, Ooredoo’s CEO told Reuters.
The deal marks Nvidia’s first large-scale launch in a region to which Washington has curbed the export of sophisticated U.S. chips to prevent Chinese companies from using Middle Eastern countries as a backdoor to access the latest technologies. latest in artificial intelligence.
Ooredoo will thus be the first company in the region to be able to give customers of its data centers in Qatar, Algeria, Tunisia, Oman, Kuwait and the Maldives direct access to AI and graphics processing technology. Nvidia, Ooredoo said in a statement.
Making this technology available will allow Ooredoo to better help its customers deploy generative AI applications, said Ronnie Vasishta, senior vice president of telecommunications at Nvidia.
“Through this agreement, our B2B customers will have access to services that their competitors are unlikely to have access to for 18 to 24 months,” Aziz Aluthman Fakhroo, CEO of Ooredoo, said in an interview with Reuters.
The companies did not reveal the value of the deal, which was signed on the sidelines of the TM Forum in Copenhagen on June 19.
Ooredoo also wouldn’t reveal the exact type of Nvidia technology it will install in its data centers, saying it would depend on availability and customer demand.
Washington allows the export of some Nvidia technologies to the Middle East, but limits exports of the company’s most sophisticated chips.
Ooredoo is investing $1 billion to increase the capacity of its regional data centers by an additional 20 to 25 megawatts on top of the 40 megawatts it currently has, and plans to nearly triple that capacity by the end of the decade, said Mr. Fakhroo.
The company spun off its data centers into a separate company, following a similar move last year to create the Middle East’s largest tower company, in a deal with Kuwait’s Zain and TASC Towers Holding of Dubai.
Ooredoo also intends to separate its submarine cables and fiber optic network into a separate entity, Mr Fakhroo said.
