Dubai, United Arab Emirates - Deep in the Middle East oil-rich desert of the United Arab Emirates, its mission is to establish supremacy in the field of artificial intelligence.

Seven thousand miles across the planet, the United States, led by President Donald Trump, hopes that American companies will dominate the global AI competition.

Although their goals may be isolated from the mainland, their ambitions have achieved amazing consistency.

The United States is currently the world's most advanced semiconductor chip, while the UAE and neighboring Gulf countries have the abundant, cheap energy needed to power huge AI data centers. The two countries have been allies for half a century, and Abu Dhabi accepted Trump this month with unprecedented exaggeration and investment commitments during his US presidential visit, many of which focused on technology and AI.

To the view of many investors, financial leaders and political power, the growing AI alliance in the two countries, from Silicon Valley and Washington to Abu Dhabi and Dubai, has formed a multi-billion-dollar AI alliance – a game in heaven.

"Energy-rich Gulf countries have joined the roster of trusted partners," Myron Xie, a semi-analytic analyst, told CNBC.

Meanwhile, “UAE has gained access to advanced computing and talent, helping it achieve its sovereign AI goals.” “The Middle East is full of cheap energy and capital and is expected to be the next regional AI hub.”

In the UAE, these developments are part of the Gulf Emirates’ long-term strategy to position itself as a global leader in AI. The country's leadership will strengthen its geopolitical influence, diversify its economy, transcend crude oil dependence, and see itself as a technologically powerful nation.

Washington’s goal is clear: to ensure that U.S. companies lead global AI competitions with China and disseminate U.S. technology around the world.

Trump's visit to the Middle East in mid-May (parking spaces in Riyadh, Doha and Abu Dhabi) announced more than $200 billion in commercial deals between the United States and the UAE. This puts a $2 trillion investment agreement in the Gulf region, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

As part of the Abu Dhabi deal, OpenAI, Oracle, Nvidia and Cisco Systems announced that they will help build the Star-style UAE AI campus launched in 2026. Stargate Project is a $500 billion private sector AI investment vehicle announced by OpenAI in partnership with Abu Dhabi Investment Investment Firmess company MGX and Japan's SoftBank.

The initial 200 MW artificial intelligence cluster next year should be launched in Abu Dhabi, the two companies said. AI campus deals mean that the UAE can access many of NVIDIA's latest chips, namely US technology and software.

This is such a deal that the last U.S. administration would face restrictions before the U.S. administration, but Trump hopes to change how to deal with technology export restrictions.

His administration plans to revoke the Biden-era “Artificial Intelligence Proliferation Rules” that even imposes strict export controls on advanced AI chips on U.S.-friendly countries. Eliminating these restrictions could make the U.S. sensitive U.S. technology in the hands of competitors such as China, a topic of ongoing debate among U.S. lawmakers and security professionals.

Mohammed Soliman, a senior fellow at the Middle East College in Washington, D.C., said partnerships that once centered around oil exports and the purchase of weapons are changing.

“Computing, not vulgar, will be the core pillar of U.S. Gulf relations,” Soliman said. “Moving forward, it’s no longer just about energy policy; it will be about computing and how we and the Gulf build an AI ecosystem that can serve the third market, emerging markets.”

In the context of AI, compute the computing resources, such as hardware and processing power required to train and run AI models.

"This is a huge inflection point (in comparison) in the relationship (compared to our relationship a few years ago), Soriman said on the Middle East Academy podcast recorded on May 19.

It is worth noting that the UAE has completely bet on the future of US-led AI, a particularly important point in the context of US-China competition.

Emirati AI Company G42, establishing a major partnership with Openai, Nvidia and MicrosoftTo name just a few, Chinese companies have been completely divested (including estimated $100 million in shares bound by Tiktok owners) to avoid sanctions from the U.S. Department of Commerce and retain U.S. technology that powers NVIDIA CHIPS and other U.S. technology that supports AI applications.

“So far, we are competing to have the best large language models and ultimately have AGI (artificial universal intelligence),” said Baghdad Gherras, an UAE venture capital partner at Antler, who invests in early stage AI Ventures.

AGI usually refers to AI that is smarter than humans, although the definitions vary.

"For the UAE, if they want to be the leader of the AI ​​competition, then the first thing they have to ensure is computing. If you don't have a seat under AI leadership," Gherras told CNBC.

He added that the UAE “decided to relocate the focus of its geographic economy from China to the United States because they knew Nvidia was by far the best bargaining chip for AI, but the entire semiconductor supply chain was also mostly in Taiwan.”

Gherras pointed out that China is "catching a very fast, crazy speed."

The UAE’s development of its own Big Language Model (LLM) Falcon AI represents an important step in the region’s AI development – ​​but it also laid the foundation for the country’s geopolitical and economic ambitions to dominate the AI ​​market for the next decade.

Such a position will also enhance the UAE's diplomatic leverage, allowing it to play a more influential role in global technological governance and policy discussions.

"If these ambitions become a reality, you might see that the Bay is a region that provides computing services to emerging markets," said Soliman of the Middle East College.

"Thinking of the bay as a place where large language models are housed in Swahili, Hindi, these languages, they are able to provide housing data, training data, inferences about all of these economies because they have infrastructure," he added. "So they become AI leaders in emerging markets."

"It's a huge, huge impact, a huge level of development," Soriman stressed. "They used to be energy producers and became the backend for AI applications - it's really huge."

Part of the UAE and the wider region is eager to establish supremacy globally and delay China's progress.

On the one hand, U.S. export routes restrict companies like NVIDIA that sell advanced technology to China. It also prevents China from entering some technologies to drive its development in areas such as semiconductors and AI.

Meanwhile, Washington is opening new markets to the largest tech companies, such as the Middle East.

"The move has a political perspective as it strengthens the U.S. computing supply chain while limiting China's supply chain. It gives the U.S. an advantage in the AI ​​arms race, positioning the country as a continuing leadership," said David Meier, an economist at Julius Baer.

Beijing and Chinese companies have been working to enter new markets to drive their technology around the world, especially in areas such as AI. However, the United States has been working to consolidate itself first and establish partnerships with the government.

"This game is spreading American AI around the world," Futurum Group CEO Daniel Newman told CNBC on Tuesday.

American companies have answered the phone. Openai reached an agreement with the UAE last week to build an AI infrastructure and launch Chatgpt nationwide, and positioned himself as a countermeasure to China and as a business that can deliver American artificial intelligence to countries around the world.

In February, Chris Lehane, chief global affairs officer of OpenAI, told CNBC that the company saw a world where two major AI models—a "small D'democracy" AI led by the Chinese Communist Party and a "small D'democracy" AI led by the United States.

“If you are a country and want to build your own AI ecosystem, your own AI hub, then you will build developers in your country and that will be some version of the company in the future, and I think you want to see the one built on a democratic AI system because it will provide your country with its own country to build this technology for your own country,” Lehane said. ”

- CNBC's Dylan Butts contributed to this report.