White House AI and Crypto Czar David Sacks said President Donald Trump’s signing of an AI Partnership with Middle East countries is a “masterstroke,” and “a historic diplomatic and economic success.”
On his X account, Sacks wrote: “President Trump’s trip to the Middle East was also a game-changer in the global AI race.”
With the administration’s signing of the first “AI Acceleration Partnership” in Abu Dhabi, Trump signaled a new willingness to work with Gulf State partners on AI, he added.
“This approach was sorely needed to mend fences in the region after years of hostility from the Biden administration,” he said.
Over the course of a three-day trip to the Middle East, Trump and his emissaries from Silicon Valley have transformed the Arab Gulf from an artificial-intelligence neophyte into an AI power broker.
The United States also struck multibillion-dollar agreements to sell advanced chips from Nvidia and AMD to Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
According to Sacks, the AI Acceleration Partnership is not just a single deal, “it’s a new framework for advancing American AI both at home and abroad, positioning our tech stack as the ecosystem of choice across the region for decades to come.”
Sacks explained that under this new framework, the US global partners will invest in the build-out of data centers in the US at least as large and powerful as those in their own home countries.
This means, he said, billions of dollars of investment flowing into the US and billions more in revenue from American technology exports.
Also, the vast majority of advanced semiconductors available in partner countries will be owned and operated by US hyperscalers and cloud service providers. “This ensures that these new AI compute clusters remain part of the larger American technology ecosystem, aligned with US interests,” Sacks explained.
Moreover, he said the framework will allow all advanced semiconductors to remain under robust and comprehensive US security controls, protecting American technology from any illegal diversion or illegal access.
“This is a win-win deal for the US and our global partners,” Sacks wrote. “The US accelerates the build-out of its AI compute infrastructure, and its partners get to participate in the bounties of AI by building on the leading AI tech stack.”
Therefore, “by creating the largest ecosystem, we also help to cement American technology as the global standard — before our competitors can catch up.”
According to Sacks, the alternative to this framework was to exclude critical geo-strategic, resource-rich friends and allies from our AI ecosystem.
“This was the Biden policy, and it was foolish in the extreme. Every country will want to participate in the AI revolution. If we align with them, we will pull them into our orbit. If we reject them, we will drive them into China’s arms,” he wrote.
Thanking Trump for his leadership on AI, he stressed: “He made it a priority for the US to win the AI race, and his historic diplomacy in the Gulf region has already enabled the first AI Acceleration Partnership, with more to come.”
