A multi-billion-dollar deal between the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the US to send Nvidia AI chips to the Gulf nation is stuck in limbo, frustrating senior executives at the chip giant, including CEO Jensen Huang.

Under the terms of the agreement, which was signed in May, the Trump administration agreed to send several hundred thousand Nvidia chips to the UAE in exchange for the investment in the US.

However, according to the Wall Street Journal, five months after the deal was made, the investment still hasn’t been finalized, and, as a result, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is refusing to sign off on the export licenses.

The report said the delay has frustrated Huang, in addition to members of the Trump administration, including White House AI Czar David Sacks. The WSJ added that while officials don’t believe Lutnick has held up the deal, he has played a role in slowing the process down.

An Nvidia executive disputed this, however, claiming the company isn’t concerned about how the deal is being handled, while White House spokesman Kush Desai said in a statement: “Sacks and Secretary Lutnick are integral to the President’s AI agenda and are working diligently to get deals done on behalf of the American people.”

The May agreement was announced alongside a host of high-profile Saudi data center announcements made during Trump’s tour of the Middle East, including a ten-square-mile UAE-US AI Campus to be located in Abu Dhabi, to be run by Emirati AI company G42 and American hyperscalers.

Commenting on the UAE chip deal at the time, Lutnick said: “Today’s agreement launches a historic Middle Eastern partnership on AI between our two nations. It promotes major investment in advanced semiconductors and data centers across the US and the UAE. In the UAE, American companies will operate the data centers and offer American-managed cloud services throughout the region. The agreement also contains strong security guarantees to prevent diversion of US technology."

During his time in office, former President Joe Biden had sought to limit chip exports to countries, including those in the Middle East, amidst claims that the UAE had become a potential “transshipment point” used by Russia to evade sanctions and the country’s deepening ties with China.