Ooredoo CEO, Aziz Aluthman Fakhroo, sits in his office during an interview with Reuters in Doha, Qatar June 4, 2024. REUTERS/Arafat Barbakh |
Nvidia has signed a deal to deploy its artificial intelligence technology at data centres owned by Qatari telecoms group Ooredoo in five Middle Eastern countries, Ooredoo's CEO told Reuters.
The agreement marks Nvidia's first large-scale launch in a
region to which Washington has curbed the export of sophisticated U.S. chips to
stop Chinese firms from using Middle Eastern countries as a back door to access
the newest AI technology.
It will make Ooredoo the first company in the region able to
give clients of its data centers in Qatar, Algeria, Tunisia, Oman, Kuwait and
the Maldives direct access to Nvidia's AI and graphics processing technology,
Ooredoo said in a statement.
Providing the technology will allow Ooredoo to better help
its customers deploy generative AI applications, Nvidia's senior vice president
of telecom Ronnie Vasishta said.
"Our b2b clients, thanks to this agreement, will have
access to services that probably their competitors (won't) for another 18 to 24
months," Ooredoo's CEO Aziz Aluthman Fakhroo told Reuters in an interview.
The companies did not disclose the value of the deal, which
was signed on the sidelines of the TM Forum in Copenhagen on June 19.
Ooredoo also would not disclose exactly what type of Nvidia
technology it will be installing in its data centres, saying that it depends on
availability and customer demand.
Washington allows the export of some Nvidia technology to
the Middle East, but curbs exports of the company's most sophisticated chips.
Ooredoo is investing $1 billion to boost its regional data
centre capacity by 20-25 additional megawatts on top of the 40 megawatts it
currently has, and plans to almost triple that by the end of the decade,
Fakhroo said.
The company has carved out its data centers into a separate
company following a similar move last year to create the Middle East's largest
tower company in a deal with Kuwait's Zain and Dubai's TASC Towers Holding.
Ooredoo also has plans to carve out its undersea cables and
fiber network into a separate entity, Fakhroo said.