Ooredoo signs a deal with NVIDIA to provide artificial intelligence technologies in the Middle East
Ooredoo signs a deal with NVIDIA to provide artificial intelligence technologies in the Middle East
The Qatari telecommunications company Ooredoo announced that it had signed an agreement with the American company NVIDIA in order to obtain its artificial intelligence technologies in its data centers in some Middle Eastern countries.
This agreement comes in light of the restrictions imposed by the United States on the export of advanced American chips to the Middle East, to prevent Chinese companies from accessing them indirectly.
Ooredoo said that this agreement will make it the first company in the Middle East to provide its data center customers with direct access to NVIDIA’s advanced artificial intelligence technologies.
Ooredoo will provide these new technologies in its data centers in five countries in the Middle East: Qatar, Algeria, Tunisia, Oman, Kuwait, in addition to the Maldives.
For his part, Aziz Al-Othman Fakhro, CEO of Ooredoo, said in an interview with Reuters, saying: “Our agreement with NVIDIA will give our corporate customers a significant competitive advantage, as they will receive services that will likely not be available to their competitors for a period ranging between 18 and 24 months.”
NVIDIA and Ooredoo did not disclose the financial value of the deal, which was signed on the sidelines of the TM Forum in Copenhagen, Denmark, nor did Ooredoo reveal the NVIDIA chipsets it would obtain, saying that it would depend on availability and customer demand.
It is worth noting that the United States only allows the export of some NVIDIA chips to the Middle East, but restricts exports of advanced chips.
Ooredoo transformed its data centers into a separate company, after a similar step it took last year to create the largest communications tower company in the Middle East, through a deal with the Kuwaiti company Zain and the UAE’s Task Towers Holding Company. The company also plans to transform its submarine cables and its fiber network into a separate entity.
NVIDIA is the leading company in manufacturing artificial intelligence chips, and the artificial intelligence revolution has contributed to increasing the company’s market value to now become one of the largest global companies.
