OpenAI and technology company G42 announced Thursday that a data center with a capacity of 1 gigawatt will be built in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), making it one of the most powerful in the world.
This was reported by The Wall Street Journal. The project, called Stargate UAE, is part of a broader strategy by the UAE to become a global hub for artificial intelligence (AI). The government wants to become one of the largest investors in AI companies and infrastructure. The IT sector is thus developing into an important employer.
The initiative is led by G42, an AI company controlled by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed al Nahyan, the president’s brother and national security advisor. According to OpenAI, as part of the agreement, an advanced version of ChatGPT will be made available free of charge to everyone in the country.
The first part of the data center, with a capacity of 200 megawatts, should be operational by the end of 2026. The rest of the project is still being worked out. G42 is financing the construction. OpenAI and Oracle will manage the data center. Other partners include investor SoftBank, chip manufacturer Nvidia, and network company Cisco.
The cost of the Abu Dhabi project is unknown. However, similar projects in the US cost well over $10 billion.
Negotiations with Trump
The project results from months of negotiations between the UAE and the Trump administration. The talks resulted in an agreement to import up to 500,000 AI chips annually. According to insiders, this is an exception to the previous restrictions imposed by the Biden administration. The latter had only made such advanced technology available to close allies out of fear that it would fall into the wrong hands, specifically those of China.
The UAE launched a broad charm offensive to convince the Trump administration of their reliability. Representatives publicly promised to invest more than $1.4 trillion in the US. They also used $2 billion worth of cryptocurrency from Trump’s World Liberty Financial to invest in a crypto company. And they organized meetings between top US CEOs and members of the royal family in Abu Dhabi.
According to David Sacks, AI advisor to the Trump administration, the agreement stipulates that the UAE will also contribute to building AI infrastructure in the US that is as powerful as that in their own country.
The UAE investment fund MGX is already involved in Stargate, a planned network of US data centers with an estimated value of $100 billion, an initiative of OpenAI and SoftBank.
Similar collaborations with other US technology companies are expected to emerge in the future. The UAE leaders are looking for tenants for their planned cluster of data centers with a total capacity of 5 gigawatts. A scale model of the project was presented during Trump’s visit to the region last week. The UAE is betting that US tech companies want to place servers closer to users in Africa and India in order to improve data traffic speeds.
Tip: UAE to build largest AI campus outside US after agreement