Nvidia Corp. (NASDAQ: NVDA) shares may have slackened in the past couple of sessions but fundamentally, the company is going strong. A new report said on Sunday that the Jensen Huang-led company may have made further inroads in the Middle East.
What Happened: Nvidia has clinched a deal to provide artificial intelligence technology to data centers owned by Ooredoo, a Qatari telecoms group, in five Middle Eastern countries, a release from the latter showed. Ooredoo said it is becoming a Nvidia Cloud Partner as a part of its strategy to become the leading digital infrastructure provider in the Middle East and North Africa.
The deal was signed on the sidelines of the TM Forum in Copenhagen on June 19.
The telecom company is leveraging Nvidia's advanced accelerated computing platform to help enable the AI revolution in the region. This platform will benefit governments, enterprises, and startups in Qatar, Algeria, Tunisia, Oman, Kuwait, and the Maldives as they get access to Nvidia's latest full-stack AI platform, it said.
Aziz Aluthman Fakhroo, Group CEO of Ooredoo, said, "Implementing NVIDIA's full-stack platform for accelerated computing and generative AI, Ooredoo is equipped to be at the forefront of the AI revolution in MENA, driving digitalization and innovation as the leading digital infrastructure provider in the region.
Why It's Important: Nvidia has been at the forefront of the AI technology drive in the Middle East. The latest agreement with Ooredoo marked the company's first large-scale launch in the region and has come despite U.S. export curbs to stop China from accessing high-performance U.S. chips from Middle Eastern countries, Reuters reported.
The companies did not disclose the value of the deal and the type of technology that would be installed in the data centers, the report said.
Fakhroo reportedly told Reuters that the company was investing $1 billion to boost its regional data center capacity by 20-25 additional megawatts on top of the 40 megawatts it currently has. The capacity will likely be tripled by the end of the decade, he added.
Nvidia ended Friday's session down 3.22% at $126.57, according to Benzinga Pro data. The stock has gained a whopping 156% so far this year.