The UAE and OpenAI have announced a $20 billion partnership to construct Stargate UAE, a 1-gigawatt artificial intelligence data centre in Abu Dhabi. This initiative is part of OpenAI’s “OpenAI for Countries” program, aiming to expand AI infrastructure globally. The project is led by Emirati firm G42, with contributions from Oracle, NVIDIA, Cisco, and SoftBank Group.
The data centre will be situated within a newly established 10-square-mile UAE–US AI Campus, designed to provide 5 gigawatts of AI data centre capacity. The first 200 megawatts of Stargate UAE are expected to become operational in 2026.
As part of the agreement, the UAE will become the first country to offer ChatGPT Plus subscriptions to its entire population. The partnership also includes UAE investments in US-based AI infrastructure projects, aligning with the recently announced “America First Investment Policy.”
The facility will be powered by nuclear, solar, and natural gas energy sources to minimise carbon emissions. It will also house a science park to drive innovation and talent development in AI.
This collaboration follows the easing of US export controls on AI chips to the UAE, allowing the import of advanced semiconductors necessary for the data centre’s operations.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman stated that establishing the first Stargate outside the US is a step toward ensuring that significant AI advancements can emerge from more locations and benefit the global community.
The UAE–US AI Campus is expected to serve as a regional platform for US hyperscalers and large enterprises, offering latency-friendly services to nearly half of the global population within a 2,000-mile radius of the UAE.
Cisco will provide networking, security, and observability hardware and software solutions for OpenAI workloads, advancing AI infrastructure in the Middle East.
