THIS COULD PROVE TO BE THE BIGGEST DEVELOPMENT FROM TRUMP’S MIDDLE EAST TOUR: Who Needs China? Saudi Arabia Steps Up As Big Buyer Of AI Chips.

The Saudi AI projects could be worth $3 billion to $5 billion in annual chip sales and $15 billion to $20 billion in total spending over a multiyear period, BofA Securities analyst Vivek Arya said in a client note Tuesday.

“Sovereign AI nicely complements commercial cloud investments with a focus on training and inference of LLMs (large language models) in local culture, language and needs, and could be 10%-15% or $50 billion-plus annually in the longer-term $450-$500 billion global AI infrastructure opportunity,” Arya said.

He added, “Sovereign AI could also help address limited power availability for data centers in U.S., plus offset headwinds from restrictions on U.S. companies shipping to China.”

While Nvidia and AMD are the main beneficiaries of the Saudi AI ventures, other companies in the AI ecosystem will benefit as well, Arya said. That includes AI stocks Broadcom (AVGO), Coherent (COHR) and Marvell Technology (MRVL), he said.

Keeping the Middle East’s oil kingdoms oriented toward the West instead of China might be as much about chips as it is about planes and ships.