Shares of artificial intelligence chipmaker Nvidia soared 5.6 per cent on May 13 on news that it would deliver at least 18,000 chips to Saudi Arabia, under a new deal secured by United States President Donald Trump, according to a Reuters report.
The stock rise nudged Nvidia’s market value to $3 trillion and pushed founder-CEO Jensen Huang’s net worth close to $120 billion, the report added.
The deal includes Nvidia selling “hundreds of thousands” of its AI chips to Saudi sovereign wealth fund-run AI startup called Humain.
Nvidia Stock Rise: Jensen Huang Joins World’s Richest
Nvidia shares closed 5.6 per cent higher at $129.93 on May 13 amid Donald Trump Gulf tour, which he kicked off in Saudi Arabia. He will visit the UAE later this week.
Jensen Huang’s net worth has risen to around $120 billion, which is up from $80 billion in 2024. Notably, this takes the Nvidia chief into the top 10 of the Forbes real-time billionaires list, the report added.
According to a Bloomberg report, the 62-year-old Nvidia Chief’s pay package has also jumped 46 per cent due to the stock award component in his salary. His compensation saw $996,514 from stock awards in 2024, and is near at $1.5 million now.
Donald Trump’s Gulf Visit: Host of AI Deals Announced
Under agreements with the US, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are poised to win wider access to advanced AI chips from Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) during Donald Trump’s Middle-East visits. We list what is on the cards:
- Nvidia, the world’s biggest semiconductor maker, will supply “several hundred thousand” of its most advancedd AI chips to Saudi Arabia’s Humain over the next five years. This includes 18,000 of its cutting-edge GB300 Grace Blackwell products and its InfiniBand networking technology.
- Rival AMD is set to provide chips and software for data centers “stretching from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to the United States” in a $10 billion project, Humain and AMD said.
- Global AI, a US tech venture, also plans to collaborate with Humain, in an agreement expected to be worth billions of dollars, sources told Bloomberg.
- Amazon.com Inc. and Humain said they would invest more than $5 billion to build an “AI zone” in Saudi Arabia.
- Cisco Systems Inc., the world’s largest provider of networking gear, is working with Humain to combine its “global expertise with the kingdom’s bold AI ambitions” to build infrastructure. It also extended a partnership with Abu Dhabi AI firm G42.
- Saudi Arabian venture capital firm STV launched a $100 million AI fund with backing from Alphabet Inc.’s Google, focused on early-stage startups in the Middle East and North Africa for infrastructure development, according to a statement. How much Google will contribute is not yet known.
- The UAE could also get 5,00,000 advanced Nvidia chips each year from now till 2027, sources told Bloomberg. One-fifth would be set aside for G42, while the remainder would go to US companies building data centers in the Gulf nation, they added.
- OpenAI is considering building new data center capacity in the UAE, sources said.
(With inputs from Agencies)
