AI chipmakers ride Saudi investment wave; Nvidia turns positive for 2025, AMD unveils $6bn buyback
Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) and Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD) both rallied sharply on Wednesday, lifted by a wave of AI-related announcements and strategic deals tied to President Donald Trump’s Middle East tour.
Nvidia closed 4.16% higher at US$135.34, extending its weekly gain above 16% and turning positive for 2025—a notable reversal after the stock lagged earlier in the year. AMD rose 4.68% to US$117.72 after unveiling a US$6bn share buyback program and solidifying its role in Saudi Arabia’s AI ambitions with a US$10bn chip partnership.
Nvidia crosses back into the green
Nvidia became the third “Magnificent Seven” tech stock to move back into positive territory for 2025, joining Meta Platforms and Microsoft. The rebound puts Nvidia’s market capitalisation back above US$3 trillion, though the stock remains 11% off its January high.
The immediate catalyst was a blockbuster AI chip deal announced Tuesday during the Saudi-US investment forum in Riyadh. CEO Jensen Huang confirmed Nvidia would deliver more than 18,000 of its top-tier GB200 “Blackwell” AI chips to the Saudi-backed startup Humain, part of a broader commitment to send “several hundred thousand” GPUs to the kingdom over the next five years.
Wall Street analysts called the deal geopolitically and commercially significant. Rosenblatt’s Kevin Cassidy noted it could offset “low-teens billions” in revenue otherwise threatened by US restrictions on AI chip exports to China.
The Biden-era AI diffusion rule, which had restricted advanced chip exports to third countries, was rescinded this week by the Department of Commerce, allowing shipments to resume to partners like Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
AMD bolsters buyback, lands Saudi deal
AMD announced on Wednesday that its board had approved an additional US$6bn in share buybacks, bringing total authorisation to US$10bn. CEO Lisa Su said the expanded program “reflects the Board’s confidence in AMD’s strategic direction, growth prospects, and ability to consistently generate strong free cash flow.”
The announcement followed AMD’s own major deal with Humain on Tuesday—part of the same suite of agreements tied to Trump’s US$600bn economic push in the Gulf. AMD will supply GPUs and CPUs for AI servers and collaborate on a next-generation cloud platform. The five-year deal includes plans to deploy 500 megawatts of infrastructure.
Humain, chaired by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, is central to Saudi Arabia’s AI industrialisation plan. The kingdom is positioning itself as a global AI hub under its Vision 2030 strategy, and executives say avoiding overreliance on a single chip vendor was key to partnering with both AMD and Nvidia.
Bank of America analyst Vivek Arya raised his AMD price target by US$10 to US$130 on the back of the deal.
Trump touts AI-led economic diplomacy
President Trump’s tour of the Gulf has featured prominently in the announcement of these deals. In addition to the AI pacts, Trump has championed a US$96bn order from Qatar Airways for Boeing jets and secured broader technology and defence commitments from Saudi Arabia.
Among them:
- Humain and Nvidia will build AI factories using hundreds of thousands of GPUs over five years.
- AMD and Humain will collaborate on a diversified infrastructure stack.
- Qualcomm signed a preliminary deal to develop CPUs for Humain data centres.
- Alphabet’s Google, Oracle, Salesforce, and Uber will invest alongside Saudi partners.
The White House said these efforts aim to create a “trusted technology corridor” between the US and the Gulf, while limiting Chinese access to advanced American chips.
Nvidia-backed CoreWeave beats revenue estimates
Separately, Nvidia-backed CoreWeave—an AI cloud computing startup—posted better-than-expected first-quarter revenue in its first report as a public company. The company brought in US$981.6 million, beating consensus estimates of US$852.9 million, with a backlog of US$25.9bn, including US$11.2bn from a deal with OpenAI.
CoreWeave’s results further underscore demand for GPU-intensive infrastructure in the AI race, reinforcing Nvidia’s dominant market position.
