ALBAWABA - A contract has been inked by Nvidia to implement its AI technology in data centers controlled by Ooredoo, a telecom company based in Qatar, across five Middle Eastern nations, according to a report by Reuters, amid curbs from the US on AI exports to the region.
According to a statement from Ooredoo, this will make it the very first company in the region to provide direct access to Nvidia's artificial intelligence and graphics processing technologies to customers through data centers located in Qatar, Algeria, Tunisia, Oman, Kuwait, and the Maldives.
Prior to this, the United States announced its most recent export regulations pertaining to high-end AI and HPC processors. These regulations limited the supply of such chips to many Middle Eastern nations as well as the selling of these sophisticated processors to Chinese companies, according to Tom’s Hardware, claiming such decision to prevent China from using Middle Eastern companies as a backdoor to advance its AI capabilities.
In an interview with Reuters, Ooredoo's CEO, Aziz Aluthman Fakhroo, said that the company is planning to almost triple its present 40 megawatt capacity by the end of the decade and is spending $1 billion to increase it by 20–25 megawatts at the moment, adding that “our b2b clients, thanks to this agreement, will have access to services that probably their competitors (won't) for another 18 to 24 months.”
The deal's value was not disclosed by the parties, in addition, Ooredoo declined to reveal specifically which type of Nvidia technology it intends on deploying in its data centers, citing availability and demand from clients. The deal was signed on the fringes of the TM Forum in Copenhagen on June 19.
