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.

UAE welcomes Trump amid anticipation of AI chip deals with U.S.

In the final leg of his tour through the Gulf’s royal palaces, U.S. President Donald Trump landed in Abu Dhabi on Thursday as G42 and other UAE tech firms awaited a green light for billions of dollars in advanced chip deals.

UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed greeted the U.S. leader at Abu Dhabi’s exclusive Presidential Terminal after a brief flight on Air Force One from neighboring Qatar. Also on hand to welcome Trump were the President’s brothers, Vice President and National Security Adviser Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed, who is Chairman of G42, and Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed.

Earlier in the day, Qatar hosted a business conference with Trump in the capital city of Doha and the president talked talked to U.S. soldiers at the Al Udeid U.S. Air Base, which has been an anchor for America’s security alliance in the Gulf.

The U.S. leader woke up in Doha after Emir Sheikh Tamim hosted a lavish state dinner at Lusail Palace on Wednesday night. On Trump’s arrival in Qatar, his motorcade passed sword dancers, parading camels and a royal honor guard mounted on Arabian stallions.

Today’s visit to the UAE is the last stop in his regional tour, which started on Tuesday when he landed in Riyadh and wraps up with Friday’s return to Washington.

Trump and close adviser Elon Musk spent two days in Saudi Arabia, hosted by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and holding chats with corporate leaders from such powerhouses as Aramco, the Public Investment Fund, Nvidia, OpenAI, BlackRock and Citigroup.

In Abu Dhabi, where main roads are decked out with neon signs welcoming Trump, the president was expected to announce a preliminary agreement to let the UAE import 500,000 of Nvidia’s most advanced AI chips per year, starting in 2025, boosting the Emirates’ construction of data centers required for the highest level of AI development, Reuters reports.

Twenty percent of the chips will be allocated to UAE tech firm G42, and the remainder will be allocated to U.S. companies like Microsoft and Oracle that are building data centers in the UAE. The deal could potentially extend through 2027 or even 2030, according to the news agency.

The White House said Trump secured deals totaling more than $243 billion with Qatar after leaders from the Gulf peninsula state pledged some $1.2 trillion in American investment. The UAE has committed to investing $1.4 trillion in the U.S. over the next 10 years, while Saudi Arabia said it hopes to reach $1 trillion during Trump’s four-year term.

Among the largest deals was Qatar’s $96 billion plan to acquire as many as 210 Boeing 787 Dreamliner and 777X aircraft. The U.S. and Qatari governments also signed off on a $1 billion agreement for Raytheon to provide counter-drone capabilities to Qatar. General Atomics also secured a nearly $2 billion agreement for Qatar to acquire MQ-9B drones.

Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman, meanwhile, defended his country’s offer to Trump of a luxury jet to replace the 40-year-old Air Force One, telling CNN it was not an influence-buying effort.

“It is government to government. The transaction has nothing to do with personnel, whether it’s on the U.S. side or on the Qatari side,” he said, adding that Qatar is ready to withdraw the plan if it’s found to be illegal.

Trump moves on to Qatar after bounty of deals in Saudi Arabia

U.S. President Donald Trump took his Middle East dealmaking tour to Qatar today after a summit meeting in Riyadh with leaders of the six Gulf states that focused in part on promoting more investment in American military hardware and artificial intelligence.

The visit to Qatar’s capital of Doha continued to generate criticism from Democrats in Congress over Trump’s intention to accept a gift from the Qatari government of a refurbished $400 million plane that would temporarily replace Air Force One.

Arriving in the early afternoon after a short flight from Saudi Arabia, Trump landed at Hamad International Airport in Doha and was met by Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim, who was waiting on a yellow carpet to symbolize the desert peninsula’s sandy terrain.

Tomorrow, the President will meet Qatari business leaders for breakfast and greet U.S. soldiers at the Al Udeid U.S. Air Base, before taking off for the UAE.

In his two-day visit to Riyadh, Trump lavished attention on Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who said he would try to meet the President’s challenge for investing $1 trillion in the U.S. over the next four years.

At a Saudi-U.S. business conference in Riyadh, Trump and MBS held court with a constellation of billionaires, including Tesla’s Elon Musk, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, BlackRock’s Larry Fink, Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman and Bridgewater’s Ray Dalio.

From the Saudi business world, the conference featured Muhammad Al Jasser, Chairman of Islamic Development Bank; Nabeel Koshak, CEO of Saudi Venture Capital; Marc Winterhoff, Interim CEO of Lucid; John Pagano, Group CEO of Red Sea Global; Mohammad Abunayyan, Chairman of ACWA Power; Tony Douglas, CEO of Riyadh Air; and Jerry Inzerillo, Group CEO of Diriyah Co.

The Saudi Crown Prince wrapped up the day by bringing Trump for a tour of Diriyah, the ancestral home of the Al Saud royal family, which was led by Inzerillo. The site is undergoing a massive renovation as one of the multibillion megaprojects undertaken by the kingdom, along with the 100-mile long Neom city on the kingdom’s west coast and the Al Mukkab skyscraper cube in Riyadh.

Among the biggest issues discussed in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday was the extent to which the Trump administration would lift sanctions on AI semiconductor chips that are being eagerly sought by the Gulf states.

Nvidia, the world’s biggest semiconductor maker, agreed to supply its most advanced AI chips to Saudi Arabia’s Humain, a company created to push that country’s AI infrastructure efforts, Bloomberg reports. Humain will get “several hundred thousand” of Nvidia’s most advanced processors over the next five years, starting with 18,000 of its cutting-edge GB300 Grace Blackwell products and its InfiniBand networking technology.

Huang saw his personal net worth surge to approximately $120 billion over the day, up from $80 billion a year ago, driven by soaring demand for the company’s AI chips that has fueled a sharp rise in its stock, Reuters reports.

AMD, Nvidia’s nearest rival in AI accelerators, will provide chips and software for data centers “stretching from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to the United States” in a $10 billion project, Humain and AMD said.

Also, Saudi VC firm STV launched a $100 million AI fund backed by Google to invest in MENA startups, as part of a broader set of tech-focused U.S.-Saudi agreements announced during President Trump’s visit to Riyadh, Bloomberg reports. And Saudi Arabia agreed to authorize the use of Musk’s Starlink service for aviation and maritime shipping, the SpaceX founder announced.

Baidu’s Li tells Dubai summit AI costs pushing China to innovate

Inside Dubai’s luxurious Madinat Jumeirah resort at the World Governments Summit, some 6,000 participants were scrambling between hotel ballrooms on Tuesday to see a parade of government and corporate leaders talk about the future of the earth.

Another 1.5 million tuned in on the web feed. Topping the agenda in one session after another was how to address the promise and threats presented by artificial intelligence.

Robin Li, CEO of China’s Baidu talked about how the high costs of AI development have forced the world’s second-largest economy to find new computing solutions, including DeepSeek, which has come up with vastly cheaper AI models than those developed by OpenAI, Microsoft and Google.

“You just don’t know when and where innovations come from,” Li said in an onstage conversation with Omar Al Olama, UAE Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence, Digital Economy and Remote Work Applications.

Kristalina Georgieva, the Bulgarian economist who serves as Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, said the world is at an important juncture that will determine whether AI turns into a great story or a nightmare. “There are many, many unknowns,” she sighed.

Adding a touch of glamor on Monday night was a star-studded event at the Museum of the Future, where many of the WGS delegates attended TIME magazine’s Impact Awards Gala, which featured appearances by Grimes, the artist, singer and ex-life partner of Elon Musk, as well as video artist Refik Anadol and musician Arqam Al Abri.

Topping the bill on Wednesday will be Oracle’s Larry Ellison, former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair and former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who will deliver a keynote address in the morning. Google’s Sundar Pichai and Goldman Sachs’ Jared Cohen will speak in separate sessions on the future of tech.