Elon Musk's xAI just landed the first major contract for a massive data center being built in Saudi Arabia, packed with 600,000 Nvidia chips. The deal, announced at the U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum in Washington D.C., represents one of the largest AI infrastructure partnerships to date and signals how sovereign AI initiatives are reshaping the global chip landscape.
Nvidia and Elon Musk just unveiled what might be the most audacious AI infrastructure deal of 2025. Speaking at the U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum in Washington D.C., Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang announced that Musk's xAI will be the first customer for a colossal data center being constructed in Saudi Arabia, equipped with 600,000 of the company's graphics processing units.
The announcement caps months of quiet negotiations that began with Nvidia's partnership with Saudi Arabia's Humain back in May. At the time, the deal involved 500 megawatts of power - now we know that translates to an unprecedented deployment of AI chips that dwarfs most hyperscaler installations.
"Could you imagine, a startup company approximately 0 billion dollars in revenues, now going to build a data center for Elon," Huang said during the forum, highlighting the unique nature of the partnership. The comment underscores how xAI, despite being relatively new to the AI race, has secured access to computational resources that even established tech giants struggle to obtain.
Humain, launched earlier this year and owned by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, represents the kingdom's ambitious push into what Nvidia calls "sovereign AI." The concept has become central to the chipmaker's growth strategy as nations increasingly view domestic AI capabilities as critical to national security and cultural preservation.
The timing couldn't be more significant. Huang's appearance at a Trump administration-supported event signals the renewed focus on AI competitiveness under the new presidency. The Nvidia CEO has cultivated relationships with the administration as the company lobbies for licenses to ship future AI chips to China, navigating an increasingly complex geopolitical landscape.
But Nvidia isn't the only chip giant securing Saudi contracts. AMD announced it will provide its Instinct MI450 GPUs that could require up to 1 gigawatt of power by 2030 - double Nvidia's current commitment. Meanwhile, will deploy 200 megawatts worth of its newly launched AI200 and AI250 data center chips, first revealed in October.
