Andrew Mills
DOHA (Reuters) – Nvidia (NASDAQ:) has signed a deal with Qatari telecoms group Ooredoo to deploy its artificial intelligence technology in data centers it owns in five Middle Eastern countries, Ooredoo's chief executive officer told Reuters.
The agreement marks Nvidia's first major deployment in a region where the United States has restricted the export of advanced U.S.-made chips to stop Chinese companies from using the Middle Eastern country as a back door to access the latest AI technology.
Ooredoo said in a statement that this makes it the first company in the region to offer customers in data centers in Qatar, Algeria, Tunisia, Oman, Kuwait and the Maldives direct access to Nvidia's AI and graphics processing technology.
Offering the technology will enable Ooredoo to better help customers adopt generative AI applications, said Ronnie Vashishtha, senior vice president of communications at Nvidia.
“This deal will give our B2B customers access to services that probably won't be available to our competitors for the next 18 to 24 months,” Ooredoo CEO Aziz Alsman Fakhroo told Reuters in an interview.
The companies did not disclose the value of the agreement, which was signed on the sidelines of the TM Forum in Copenhagen on June 19.
Ooredoo also declined to specify what type of Nvidia technology it will deploy in its data centers, saying that this will depend on availability and customer demand.
Washington allows the export of some Nvidia technology to the Middle East but restricts exports of the company's most advanced chips.
Ooredoo is investing $1 billion to add 20 to 25 megawatts of capacity to its regional data centers, up from 40 megawatts today, with plans to nearly triple that capacity by the end of the decade, Fakhroo said.
The company spun off its data centers into a separate company last year following deals with Kuwait's Zain and Dubai's TASC Towers Holding to create the Middle East's largest tower company.
Ooredoo also plans to spin off its undersea cable and fibre optic networks into separate companies, Fakhroo said.
