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.

Musk’s xAI, Nvidia join with MGX in artificial intelligence fund

The UAE’s biggest tech firms are capitalizing on White House support to tighten partnerships with America’s leaders in the booming industry of artificial intelligence.

A consortium created last year by Abu Dhabi investment fund MGX, Microsoft and BlackRock to finance power-hungry AI data centers welcomed chipmaker Nvidia and Elon Musk’s xAI to the group on Wednesday.

Expansion of the top-level venture came amid the Washington visit by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed, the UAE National Security Advisor and Chairman of MGX and a constellation of other tech companies, who dined at the White House this week with President Donald Trump.

Sheikh Tahnoon, who held a meeting with Musk through a video feed on Wednesday, has been accompanied through the trip by Khaldoon Al Mubarak, the MGX Vice Chairman and CEO of the Mubadala sovereign wealth fund. Also on the visit is Dr. Sultan Al Jaber, CEO of the ADNOC national oil company and the UAE Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology. Peng Xiao, CEO of the Abu Dhabi-based AI company G42, joined the call with Musk.

Among the other meetings in his U.S. rounds, Sheikh Tahnoon said he “explored opportunities for collaboration and investment” with Oracle’s Larry Ellison.

ADQ, meanwhile, another Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund chaired by Sheikh Tahnoon, agreed to invest a combined $5 billion in a partnership with U.S-based Energy Capital Partners to build power stations for data centers and AI projects – with the investment eventually reaching $25 billion.

The announcement came as Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told the company’s GTC conference in San Jose, Calif., that the industry is preparing for a massive leap in building data centers and chip manufacturing plants with accompanying energy demand.

“Over the next several years, we’re going to be building giant AI factories,” he said. Not normal AI factories … ones you see from space,” Huang said.

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.