U.S. chip maker Nvidia will partner with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund-owned AI startup Humain and will ship 18,000 chips to the Middle Eastern nation to help power a new data center project.

Nvidia’s stock surged after a major Saudi AI chip deal and boosted Jensen Huang’s net worth to around $114 billion.

Nvidia stock jumped over 3% early Wednesday after the company and fellow chipmakers announced billions of dollars worth of AI deals with Saudi Arabia.

The United States does not hold a monopoly on technological breakthroughs. As it sought to contain China’s advances in artificial intelligence, President Joe Biden’s administration tried to use restrictions on cutting-edge chips from Nvidia as a cudgel,

Humain, an AI-focused subsidiary of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), is partnering with Nvidia to build up to 500MW of data centers in the Gulf country.

“AI chips should not be bargaining chips for broader trade deals,” says Janet Egan, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). “They underpin US AI dominance, and we have to be really careful to not make short term decisions that might be beneficial for trade in the near term, but cede AI leadership in the longer term.”

Shares of Nvidia and other semiconductor stocks surged Tuesday amid optimism about new partnerships and trade deals.

The Trump administration is preparing to announce a deal granting Saudi Arabia more access to advanced semiconductors, paving the way for increased data center capacity in the Gulf nation despite concerns from some US officials about its ties to China,