U.S. chip curbs in Middle East just ‘business as usual,’ Ooredoo CEO says after Nvidia deal
Jakub Porzyck | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Qatari telecoms provider Ooredoo told CNBC Wednesday that its new tie-up with Nvidia is compliant of all U.S. regulations and will still allow it to have access to the latest technology.
Ooredoo earlier this week signed a partnership with Nvidia, marking the chipmaker’s first large-scale entry into the Middle East market. The companies did not disclose the value of the deal.
The deal will see thousands of Nvidia’s GPUs (graphics processing units) deployed in 26 data centers across Qatar and five other countries: Kuwait, Oman, Algeria, Tunisia and the Maldives. These chips will help the data centers process massive amounts of information, which will feed AI chatbots and other tools, essential components of a country’s AI infrastructure.
The tie-up comes after the United States last year restricted the sale of certain advanced chips to some Middle Eastern nations, over fears the technology could be intercepted by China.
Washington does allow the export of some Nvidia chips to the region, and Nvidia, AMD and Intel have all indicated plans to create less powerful chips for export to the Chinese market. The restrictions focus on A100 and H100 chips, not GPUs (another type of semiconductor) which are central to this deal.
Ooredoo told CNBC that the deal is compliant of all U.S. regulations. Under the partnership, no new licenses for different chips have been created.
“As a telecom operator, dealing with very stringent regulation is business as usual. We are used to dealing with regulators and government authorities, whether they’re local or international,” Ooredoo’s CEO told CNBC.
“We are working very closely with the different regulators and with Nvidia to see all the required approvals and to provide all the guarantees required,” he added.
A tug of war between China and the United States has played out in the race to obtain and protect the latest artificial intelligence technology. The United Arab Emirates’ top AI group G42 vowed to phase out Chinese hardware to appease Washington, later seeing through a deal with Microsoft worth $1.5 billion.
Gulf states are leveraging their vast energy wealth to try to become pioneers in artificial intelligence, investing in developing the technology and importing massive quantities of chips used in AI data centers.
According to Ooredoo’s CEO, the chips are latest generation GPUs, catered specially for artificial intelligence and “will be able to deliver extreme machine learning and model utilization of these AI models and generative AI.”
They will be used in citizen services for governments, and to enhance productivity and efficiency for general corporations and research and development.
The cloud partnership between Ooredoo and Nvidia aims to position the chipmaker as the central source for AI technology in the region, and according to Ooredoo will drive innovation, development and create jobs. The countries will get access to Nvidia’s latest full-stack AI platform, catering to both Ooredoo and non-Ooredoo customers through independent data centers.
Ooredoo also committed to investing $1 billion to boost its regional data center capacity even before announcing its partnership with Nvidia. Aziz Aluthman Fakhroo, Ooredoo’s CEO, told CNBC’s Dan Murphy that he expects that investment to be returned in the years to come.
“The demand we’re seeing just from the cloud and now adding that layer of AI to it is already outstripping our most optimistic plan, so we will probably exceed that investment in the next three to five years.”
Qatar Investment Authority-backed Ooredoo, which is listed in both Qatar and Abu Dhabi, plans to develop a platform driven by AI and powered by Nvidia in the hope of meeting market demand.
Nvidia briefly became the world’s most valuable company last week, overtaking Microsoft. The chipmaker rebounded in Tuesday trade, reversing a three-day losing streak which wiped over $550 billion from its market value.
Geothermal energy has been used for thousands of years, powering heating systems as early as the 14th century. It’s getting a big upgrade.
Beyond geothermal, there’s superhot geothermal, which uses ultra-deep drilling to access extremely hot rocks, extracting 5 to 10 times more power per well.
Quaise Energy, a Massachusetts-based startup, is in the market developing the technology, which involves an electromagnetic beam that vaporizes rock. The company’s systems are able to reach superhot geothermal energy up to 12 miles below the service of the earth.
Temperatures that deep can reach 500 degrees Celsius, or over 930 degrees Fahrenheit.
“To access the resource at a scale that actually matters, we have to drill hotter first and deeper second,” said Carlos Araque, CEO of Quaise. “The oil industry routinely drills to depths of 2 to 3 miles, and maybe no more than 150 to 200 degrees Fahrenheit. We need to double or triple that to actually start to get the right resource.”
Quaise’s technology was invented at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2007. The company is working to scale it for commercial use, and demonstrated its technology with oil and gas company Nabors Industries in June. While the drilling itself is costlier, the energy output is so much higher that it’s ultimately a cost savings for the heat.
“We intend to build the first in the world superhot, or super critical geothermal power plant, to show exactly that 10X output that you get by going hotter,” Araque said.
Quaise plans to pilot the plant near Bend, Oregon, and hopes to have it ready by 2028. Nabors sees it as a very timely play.
“The potential of the market, the size of the market, the fact that today’s world with data centers, with AI, with the electrification of everything, we require so much power, kind of at all times,” said Guillermo Sierra, vice president, energy transition at Nabors.
Nabors is also an investor in Quaise. Other backers include Prelude Ventures, Engine Ventures, Safar Partners, Mitsubishi and Collab Fund. The company has raised a total of $103 million.
Sierra said the technology could also help repurpose a significant portion of the labor force that’s working in oil and gas.
At a geothermal event in Washington, D.C., in March, Department of Energy Secretary Chris Wright showed strong support for geothermal energy. He said it could help with the growth of artificial intelligence and manufacturing and lower prices for electricity.
Wright also noted that President Donald Trump specifically mentioned geothermal, along with nuclear and hydropower, in his National Energy Emergency executive order. The recently passed tax and spending bill kept funding for geothermal, originally part of the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, while cutting money for other forms of renewable energy.
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta Platforms.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Meta is set to report its second-quarter earnings on Wednesday, with analysts eyeing any changes to the company’s costs and related guidance amid CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s recent artificial intelligence hiring blitz.
Here’s what analysts polled by LSEG are expecting:
- Earnings per share: $5.92 expected
- Revenue: $44.8 billion expected
Investors are likely to be monitoring any comments from Zuckerberg about his company’s recent spending on AI and how that technology might benefit Meta’s core online advertising business.
Meta kicked off its AI hiring bonanza in June when it invested $14.3 billion into Scale AI, landing the data-annotating startup’s CEO Alexandr Wang to co-lead the new Meta Superintelligence Labs as the company’s chief AI officer. Zuckerberg undertook the AI strategy overhaul to help the company regain momentum after lukewarm developer response to its Llama 4 AI model, CNBC reported Tuesday.
Cantor analysts wrote that they do not expect Meta’s AI hiring spree will affect the company’s 2025 projections for total expenses, estimated to fall in the range between $113 billion and $118 billion. If anything, Meta’s AI hiring blitz could move “the target above the low end,” the Cantor analysts wrote.
Zuckerberg said in July that the company would invest “hundreds of billions of dollars” into computing infrastructure for its AI endeavors, but the company hasn’t officially revised its 2025 capital expenditures since April. That month, Meta said its 2025 capital expenditures would come in the range of $64 billion to $72 billion, which was an increase from its previous outlook of $60 billion to $65 billion.
Analysts at BofA Securities said in a research note published Friday that there are signs that Meta could post second-quarter sales at or above the high end of the company’s previous guidance of $42.5 billion to $45.5 billion for the period.
Those positive signs include an increase of advertising spending from brands during the quarter and Google’s strong quarterly earnings results from last week, the analysts wrote, which implies that Meta, second only to Alphabet in digital advertising, could also post solid results.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella speaks at an event commemorating the 50th anniversary of the company at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington, on , April 4, 2025.
David Ryder | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Microsoft is scheduled to report fiscal fourth-quarter results after markets close on Wednesday.
Here’s what analysts are expecting, according to LSEG consensus:
- Earnings per share: $3.37
- Revenue: $73.81 billion
The estimates imply around 14% year-over-year revenue growth for Microsoft, the world’s No. 2 company by market cap. Revenue in the same period a year earlier came in at $64.73 billion.
Like technology rivals Alphabet and Amazon, Microsoft has been rushing to add data center capacity to meet soaring demand for running artificial intelligence models. Analysts polled by Visible Alpha expect $100.5 billion in capital expenditures in Microsoft’s 2026 fiscal year, which ends in June, representing 14% growth.
Last week Alphabet bumped up its 2025 capital spending forecast by $10 billion to $85 billion.
Investors also track Microsoft’s overall Azure cloud computing business, which is expanding as companies migrate software from on-premises data centers. Analysts polled by StreetAccount expect Azure growth of 34.4%, while CNBC’s consensus is 35.3%. In the fiscal third quarter, Azure growth came to 33%.
During the quarter, Microsoft celebrated its 50th anniversary, laid off more than 6,000 people and introduced a GitHub feature for assigning coding tasks to the Copilot assistant. The company also said LinkedIn chief Ryan Roslansky would take on added responsibility running Office productivity applications.
Microsoft shares are up about 22% in 2025, while the S&P 500 index has gained 8% over the same time period.
Executives will discuss the results with analysts on a conference call starting at 5:30 p.m. ET.
WATCH: San Francisco rolls out Microsoft’s Copilot to city staff
-
Sports3 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports1 year agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports2 years agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Sports2 years agoButton battles heat exhaustion in NASCAR debut
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike