Digital Diplomacy

U.S. is ‘most important partner’ in AI, UAE envoy Al Otaiba says

A new report from the UAE embassy in Washington sheds new light on cooperation between the two countries

Nvidia’s founder and CEO Jensen Huang speaks during the annual Nvidia GTC Artificial Intelligence Conference in California. Partnerships with the biggest American technology institutions are critical for the UAE’s economic diversification efforts. (Photo: Getty Images)

A new report from the UAE Embassy in Washington sheds light on cooperation between the two countries in artificial intelligence.

Generating billions in investment dollars around the globe, AI has become a foundational technology for the UAE’s economic diversification efforts.

Partnerships with some of the biggest American institutions in technology and science, including Microsoft, Nvidia, IBM and NASA, are critical to those efforts, according to the embassy. 

“Moving from oil to data, from sand to space, from commodities to ‘compute’ – the UAE is rapidly remaking its economy and racing into the future,” Yousef Al Otaiba, the UAE Ambassador to the U.S., writes in the opening letter of the white paper. “The United States is the UAE’s most important partner in this transformation.”

The report notes collaboration between the two governments on common policy that protects intellectual property (IP) and data and allows for commercial partnerships.

Regulators in both countries have consistently cleared UAE-U.S. investments and commercial partnerships in areas such as semiconductors, advanced computing, genomics and AI, according to the report.

A California-based AI startup, Anthropic, is reportedly in talks with Mubadala for a stake worth more than $1 billion in the OpenAI challenger. A company executive said it has ruled out taking money from Saudi Arabia, citing national security issues, CNBC reports.