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AI Daily Brief — 13 May 2025

The single most consequential AI policy + chip-deal day of Q2. Trump landed in Riyadh and signed a $600B US-Saudi pact; BIS formally rescinded the Biden AI Diffusion Rule; NVIDIA, AMD, Cisco and Supermicro signed Humain partnerships totaling tens of billions; every Silicon Valley CEO (Altman, Musk, Zuckerberg, Huang, Su, Karp, Amon, Krishna, Porat, Jassy) sat at al-Yamamah Palace.

Top stories

  • BIS formally rescinds the Biden AI Diffusion Rule. Two days before it was to take effect. Under Secretary Kessler instructed BIS enforcement not to enforce. Simultaneously: policy statement warning that using Huawei Ascend chips anywhere in the world violates US export controls, plus industry guidance on preventing diversion. Cleared the legal path for the same-day Gulf deals. via BIS
  • Trump signs $600B US-Saudi strategic economic partnership. Greeted on the tarmac by MBS. At the Saudi-US Investment Forum, Trump and MBS signed the pact with MBS aiming to scale to $1T across military, security, economic and technological sectors. Defense package alone ~$142B. via CNBC
  • NVIDIA-Humain: 18,000 GB300 Blackwells for 500MW AI factory. NVIDIA’s most advanced superchips (announced earlier in the year) for a 500MW Saudi data-center campus. Several hundred thousand additional Blackwell-class GPUs to follow over the next five years. via NVIDIA
  • AMD-Humain $10B JV — 500MW over five years. Full Instinct/EPYC portfolio plus the ROCm open-source software stack. Humain owns hyperscale data centers, sustainable power systems and global fiber interconnects. Rollout starts with 50MW by Q4 2025, scaling to 500MW over five years. Cisco joins as networking partner. via AMD
  • Cisco joins Humain push, funds AI institute at KAUST. Multi-year initiative to build Saudi Arabia’s AI infrastructure ‘from the ground up.’ Cisco AI Institute at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology; commitment to upskill up to 500,000 Saudis; local manufacturing fulfillment for wireless gear. Also expanding the UAE G42 partnership. via Cisco
  • DataVolt-Supermicro $20B GPU-rack supply deal. Multi-year partnership for ultra-dense GPU platforms and rack systems destined for hyperscale AI campuses in both Saudi Arabia and the US. Pairs gigawatt-class renewable / green-hydrogen power with the most advanced server tech.
  • $80B joint US-Saudi tech investments. Per the White House fact sheet: Google, DataVolt, Oracle, Salesforce, AMD and Uber collectively committed $80 billion in ‘cutting-edge transformative technologies’ across the two countries — part of the broader $600B envelope. via White House
  • Silicon Valley descends on Riyadh. MBS hosted Musk, Altman, Zuckerberg, Karp, Amon, Krishna, Porat, Jassy, Fink at al-Yamamah Palace alongside Trump. Trump personally introduced Musk to MBS; MBS held a separate meeting with Altman. Photo op signalling the entire US tech CEO class is now openly courting Gulf sovereign-wealth AI capital. via CNBC

Who shipped

BIS, NVIDIA, AMD, Cisco, Supermicro, Humain and the White House all shipped on a single day. Frontier-lab side mostly quiet — but every major CEO was on the ground.

Open-source pulse

AMD’s ROCm stack is the day’s open thread inside the AMD-Humain deal. No major model open-weights drops.

Money, infra & hardware

Trump signalled the export of ‘hundreds of thousands’ of AI chips to the Gulf — a deliberate reversal of Biden’s containment posture. Critics (Rep. Krishnamoorthi, House Select Committee on the CCP) warned the Saudi/UAE deals risk ‘supercharging’ Chinese military and strategic AI ambitions. via Washington Post

Quiet corners

No frontier-model release from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, xAI on the date — every CEO was in Riyadh. No major Chinese-lab release either.

By the numbers

  • $600B — Saudi commitment; potential $1T
  • 18,000 — GB300 Blackwells in NVIDIA-Humain first tranche
  • $10B / 500MW / 5 years — AMD-Humain JV
  • $20B — DataVolt-Supermicro GPU-rack deal
  • $80B — joint Google/Oracle/AMD/Salesforce/Uber/DataVolt tech investments
  • 500,000 — Saudis Cisco will upskill
  • ~$142B — defense package
  • Most-mentioned entity: Humain

Compiled by AI Feed’s editor from verified web sources for 13 May 2025.