{"slug": "us-grants-the-uae-license-free-access-to-advanced-ai-chips-after-reclassifying", "title": "US grants the UAE license free access to advanced AI chips after reclassifying its export status", "summary": "The US Commerce Department reclassified the United Arab Emirates from export control groups D:3 and D:4 to Group A:5, allowing license-free access to advanced AI chips from Nvidia and AMD. The move, tied to the UAE's status as a Major Defense Partner and its support for Operation Epic Fury, benefits Abu Dhabi AI firm G42 and its Stargate UAE project, while drawing a contrast with US restrictions on China.", "body_md": "*The Commerce Department just moved the UAE out of the export control category it shared with weapons proliferation risks, clearing a license free path for Nvidia and AMD chips to flow into Abu Dhabi's AI buildout.*\n\nOn July 10, the Bureau of Industry and Security announced it is removing the United Arab Emirates from Export Administration Regulations Country Groups D:3 and D:4 and reclassifying the country as Group A:5. If you have never had to parse an export control chart, here is what that actually means: the UAE now sits alongside Washington's closest security partners for the purposes of buying advanced computing hardware, rather than in a bucket built around missile and weapons proliferation risk. Advanced AI chips and servers can now move to approved UAE entities without a case by case license, according to the Commerce Department's announcement.\n\nThat is a real change, not a paperwork tweak. Until this week, the UAE and Saudi Arabia were the only two countries approved to receive Nvidia's top tier GB300 Blackwell chips that were not classified as Tier 1 destinations, according to reporting on the Bureau of Industry and Security's own rules. Every shipment required its own review. When the UAE's ambassador to Washington announced in May that the country had received its first batch of advanced Nvidia chips, AGBI reported that shipment needed intervention at the highest levels of government, took months to win approval, and then another half year to actually arrive. That is not how a strategic partner is supposed to have to operate. It is how a country under suspicion operates.\n\nCommerce tied the reclassification to two things. First, the UAE's status as a Major Defense Partner, a designation President Biden granted the country in September 2024, only the second time Washington has used that label after India. Second, the UAE's support for Operation Epic Fury, the joint US-Israeli strike campaign against Iranian military targets that began in late February 2026. The department also pointed to the US-UAE Artificial Intelligence Cooperation framework, signed in May 2025, as the policy foundation the chip access now sits on. In exchange, the UAE has committed to preventing diversion of the technology and to matching investment in US AI infrastructure, according to the announcement.\n\nThe practical beneficiary is G42, the Abu Dhabi AI firm the Commerce Department authorized last November to import chips equivalent to 35,000 Nvidia Blackwell GB300 processors, alongside Saudi Arabia's Humain. G42 chief executive Peng Xiao called that November approval a shift from planning to execution. Nine months later, execution has been the hard part. The new A:5 status removes the license bottleneck that slowed everything after the approval, from Microsoft's internal chip transfers to the direct G42 sale.\n\nG42 is building Stargate UAE, a planned 1 gigawatt AI compute cluster backed by OpenAI, Oracle, Cisco, Nvidia and SoftBank, and part of a larger 5 gigawatt UAE-US AI Campus. Deliveries into that project have come mostly from Nvidia, with AMD and Cerebras also supplying hardware, according to Data Center Dynamics reporting on G42's plans. Faster, license free shipments mean the timeline for lighting up that first 200 megawatts of capacity stops depending on ad hoc Washington sign off for every batch of hardware.\n\nIt also draws a sharp line against how the US is treating China. While Beijing has spent the past year watching export rules tighten and loosen unpredictably on Nvidia's China-specific chips, Abu Dhabi just got moved into the same regulatory tier as America's most trusted allies. That is not an accident of bureaucracy. It is the clearest signal yet of where Washington wants its AI supply chain to run, and it is not through Shenzhen.\n\nNone of this guarantees Stargate UAE hits its gigawatt target on schedule, and the UAE's own commitments on diversion controls and matching investment still have to hold up under scrutiny. But the single biggest friction point, the license by license approval process that AGBI reported was frustrating officials on both sides, is now largely gone. The chips still have to be built, shipped and installed. They no longer have to wait in a queue built for a country Washington no longer treats as a risk.\n\n**Also read:** [Morgan Stanley Warns Chip Stocks Look Overbought Just as SK Hynix Debuts](https://startupfortune.com/morgan-stanley-warns-chip-stocks-look-overbought-just-as-sk-hynix-debuts/) • [Raytheon and Rheinmetall Just Won Britain's Biggest AI Army Training Deal](https://startupfortune.com/raytheon-and-rheinmetall-just-won-britains-biggest-ai-army-training-deal/) • [OpenAI and Google Sold AI Access to Blacklisted Chinese Firms via Singapore](https://startupfortune.com/openai-and-google-sold-ai-access-to-blacklisted-chinese-firms-via-singapore/)", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/us-grants-the-uae-license-free-access-to-advanced-ai-chips-after-reclassifying", "canonical_source": "https://startupfortune.com/us-grants-the-uae-license-free-access-to-advanced-ai-chips-after-reclassifying-its-export-status/", "published_at": "2026-07-10 16:40:52+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-10 16:45:38.791290+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-chips", "ai-policy", "ai-infrastructure", "artificial-intelligence"], "entities": ["Commerce Department", "UAE", "Nvidia", "AMD", "G42", "OpenAI", "Oracle", "SoftBank"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/us-grants-the-uae-license-free-access-to-advanced-ai-chips-after-reclassifying", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/us-grants-the-uae-license-free-access-to-advanced-ai-chips-after-reclassifying.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/us-grants-the-uae-license-free-access-to-advanced-ai-chips-after-reclassifying.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/us-grants-the-uae-license-free-access-to-advanced-ai-chips-after-reclassifying.jsonld"}}