Gulf investors power Turkey’s rising as regional technology hub

Gulf investors are doubling down on Turkey’s digital future, with UAE-based Khazna planning a major AI hub and 100MW data center in Ankara.

The facility marks the latest in a wave of high-profile investments transforming Turkey into a regional tech powerhouse, Arabian Gulf Business Insight reports.

E-commerce giant Trendyol, meanwhile, has joined forces with Castle Investments, led by Gulf Data Hub founder Tarek Al Ashram, to develop a $500 million data center in Turkey’s capital.

Dubai Islamic Bank and Emirates NBD are fueling the expansion further, committing over $260 million to bolster Turkcell’s infrastructure. 

G42 invests with OpenAI, Nvidia to build massive data center

G42, the UAE’s flagship artificial intelligence company, took a big step in its bid to establish regional leadership in the booming field.

The Abu Dhabi-backed tech company, whose Chairman is National Security Advisor Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed, announced a partnership with OpenAI on Thursday to build an AI data center with a 1-gigawatt capacity that would make it one of the most powerful facilities in the world.

Among other investors in the Abu Dhabi data center called Stargate UAE – OpenAI’s first major project outside the U.S. – are Oracle, SoftBank, Nvidia, and Cisco.

G42 and OpenAI didn’t disclose a cost for the Abu Dhabi project, although similar projects planned in the U.S. run well over $10 billion, The Wall Street Journal reports. It said the data-center project is the fruit of months of negotiations between the UAE and the Trump administration that culminated in a deal last week to allow the U.A.E. to import up to 500,000 advanced AI chips a year.

Abu Dhabi’s Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence, meanwhile, is planning next week’s graduation ceremony, where 104 students from 24 countries will get their degrees, including the six-year-old school’s first Emirati PhD graduate.

MBZUAI’s President Eric Xing told Bloomberg in an interview published today that he hopes to make his school the Stanford of the Gulf, pointing to the culture of innovation and entrepreneurship it cultivates, and its global influence.