Nvidia stock climbs 3% as U.S. approves chip sale to the UAE under Microsoft deal
Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, speaks during the 2025 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) CEO Summit in Gyeongju, South Korea, October 31, 2025.
Kim Soo-hyeon | Reuters
Microsoft said Monday it has secured export licenses to ship Nvidia chips to the United Arab Emirates in a move that could accelerate the Gulf’s lofty AI ambitions.
The tech giant said it is the first company under U.S. President Donald Trump‘s administration to secure such licenses from the Commerce Department and that the approval, granted in September, was based on “updated and stringent technology safeguards.”
The licenses enable the firm to ship the equivalent of 60,400 additional A100 chips, involving tech darling Nvidia’s more advanced GB300 GPUs.
“While the chips are powerful and the numbers are large, more important is their positive impact across the UAE,” Microsoft said in a blog post. “We’re using these GPUs to provide access to advanced AI models from OpenAI, Anthropic, open-source providers, and Microsoft itself.”
Nvidia shares climbed 3% Monday. Microsoft stock rose slightly.
Azad Zangana, head of GCC macroeconomic analysis at Oxford Economics, said in a note that Nvidia’s chips are “crucial” for the UAE’s push to be a major global player in AI.
“Access to the world’s leading AI chips provides the hardware that will give developers the leading edge that is needed in an incredibly competitive global landscape,” Zangana wrote.
There is a “very important” relationship between the UAE and U.S. governments that has spanned multiple administrations, Microsoft President Brad Smith told CNBC’s Dan Murphy at the ADIPEC conference in Abu Dhabi.
“We’re very grateful to the Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, and the work that he has championed to enable export licenses to be made available to us,” Smith said. “That builds as well on the relationships we had with Secretary [Marco] Rubio when he was in the Senate and Democrats as well. [It] takes two parties to govern, and we keep that in mind.”
Microsoft also announced it will be increasing its investment in UAE, bringing its total contribution to $15.2 billion by the end of this decade.
That includes a $1.5 billion equity investment in AI firm G42 and more than $5.5 billion in capital expenses for the expansion of Microsoft’s AI and cloud infrastructure projects in the region.
“We’re really investing in trust, and I think it’s that combination of technology, talent and trust that you’re seeing come together here in the UAE, around AI, around technology, but really the future of the whole economy,” Smith said.
— CNBC’s Dan Murphy contributed to this report.
In this photo illustration, a person is holding a smartphone with the logo of US GPU hardware company Lambda Inc. (Lambda Labs) on screen in front of website.
Timon Schneider | SOPA Images | AP
Cloud computing startup Lambda announced on Monday a multibillion-dollar deal with Microsoft for artificial intelligence infrastructure powered by tens of thousands of Nvidia chips.
The agreement comes as Lambda benefits from surging consumer demand for AI-powered services, including AI chatbots and assistants, CEO Stephen Balaban told CNBC’s “Money Movers” on Monday.
“We’re in the middle of probably the largest technology buildout that we’ve ever seen,” Balaban said. “The industry is going really well right now, and there’s just a lot of people who are using ChatGPT and Claude and the different AI services that are out there.”
Balaban said the partnership will continue the two companies’ long-term relationship, which goes back to 2018.
A specific dollar amount was not disclosed in the deal announcement.
Founded in 2012, Lambda provides cloud services and software for training and deploying AI models, servicing over 200 thousand developers, and also rents out servers powered by Nvidia’s graphics processing units.
The new infrastructure with Microsoft will include the NVIDIA GB300 NVL72 systems, which are also deployed by hyperscaler CoreWeave, according to a release.
“We love Nvidia’s product,” Balaban said. “They have the best accelerator product on the market.”
The company has dozens of data centers and is planning to continue not only leasing data centers but also constructing its own infrastructure as well, Balaban said.
Earlier in October, Lambda announced plans to open an AI factory in Kansas City in 2026. The site is expected to launch with 24 megawatts of capacity with the potential to scale up to over 100 MW.
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