Elon Musk's xAI will be first customer for Nvidia-backed data center in Saudi Arabia

In a significant development, Nvidia and Elon Musk's artificial intelligence startup, xAI, announced on Wednesday that the new data center currently under construction in Saudi Arabia will be its inaugural client. Both Musk and Nvidia's CEO, Jensen Huang, were present at the U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum held in Washington, D.C., where this partnership was unveiled. The collaboration builds upon a previous agreement made in May, when Nvidia committed to supplying the Saudi entity, Humain, with chips requiring a substantial 500 megawatts of power. Humain has revealed that the facility will house approximately 600,000 Nvidia graphics processing units (GPUs). Launched earlier this year and backed by the Saudi Public Investment Fund, Humain is set to play a pivotal role in this venture. The blueprint for the data center was first introduced during Huang's visit to Saudi Arabia with former President Donald Trump. During the forum, Huang highlighted the impressive scale of the project, noting, "Could you imagine, a startup company with roughly $0 billion in revenues, now going to build a data center for Elon?" This facility exemplifies Nvidia's vision of "sovereign AI," emphasizing the necessity for nations to establish their own data centers to safeguard national security and cultural integrity. This initiative also opens up a lucrative market for Nvidia's high-priced AI chips, extending beyond a few major hyperscalers. Huang’s participation at an event linked to the Trump administration underscores a growing focus on AI technology, as Nvidia seeks to secure licenses for shipping future AI chips to China. In a light-hearted moment during the announcement, Musk humorously misstated the data center's scale, initially confusing megawatts with size, jokingly suggesting that a facility 1,000 times larger would cost "eight bazillion, trillion dollars." Additionally, Humain's infrastructure will not solely depend on Nvidia chips; it will also incorporate offerings from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Qualcomm. Both AMD CEO Lisa Su and Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon were in attendance at a state dinner honoring Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. AMD is expected to supply GPUs that could require up to 1 gigawatt of power by 2030, specifically its Instinct MI450 models for AI applications. Cisco is set to provide supplementary infrastructure for the data center, while Qualcomm will contribute its newly unveiled AI200 and AI250 data center chips, with plans to deploy 200 megawatts of Qualcomm technology.