Artificial intelligence (AI) has become a strategic pillar for the UAE, as vital to the nation’s future as energy. The UAE is focusing AI investments on sovereign AI: building infrastructure with regional data to create local AI models, and investing in the skills needed to run them.

The UAE treats its data, culture, and knowledge as core strategic assets to be protected and developed. For businesses, building and scaling AI locally enables them to turn their own data into intelligence, securely and at scale, in line with national priorities for resilience, economic diversification, and digital leadership.

Building the foundations of sovereign AI

The UAE is backing this vision with ambitious AI infrastructure projects and international collaboration. Stargate UAE, a one-gigawatt AI computing cluster powered by NVIDIA Grace Blackwell Architecture, anchors sovereign AI on home soil. Developed with G42, OpenAI, Oracle, NVIDIA, SoftBank Group, and Cisco, Stargate is part of the planned 5GW UAE-US AI Campus in Abu Dhabi. It will give enterprises and public institutions advanced AI capability within trusted regulatory and security frameworks.

Local innovators like Khazna Data Centres are extending this momentum. Khazna is building NVIDIA-accelerated clusters with up to 250 MW capacity - AI factories that turn raw data into real-time intelligence across the Middle East and Africa. Many of these clusters will sit inside the planned UAE–US AI Campus, designed to position the UAE as one of the world’s most advanced AI infrastructure hubs.     

Marc Domenech Regional Director, Enterprise, NVIDIA

Turning local data into global advantage    

Infrastructure alone, however, doesn’t guarantee transformation - it is only as powerful as the problem it helps solve. UAE-based technology company G42 shows what sovereign AI can deliver in practice. Leveraging NVIDIA’s Earth-2 platform together with local data, G42 has developed a generative AI weather forecasting system that can predict a wide range of meteorological events at high resolution across the UAE. This AI-powered climate modeling is designed to help governments and industries strengthen resilience against extreme weather, protect critical infrastructure and supply chains, and improve public safety. It can also support the energy transition through better renewable-energy planning and more stable grids.

This type of domain-specific AI reflects Abu Dhabi’s ambition to become the world’s first AI-native government by 2027. Public services are being reimagined around AI and accelerated computing to deliver better services, stronger governance, and higher-skill jobs.

Sovereign AI reduces exposure to external policy shifts the patchwork of global data protection rules, and supply chain risks. Sovereign AI infrastructure strengthens continuity, control, and competitiveness.

Empowering talent to accelerate progress

Talent ultimately determines how far this vision can go. High-performance infrastructure, accelerated computing and advanced AI only deliver real progress where there is expertise to put them to work. Through institutions like Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI), the Technology Innovation Institute (TII) and specialized AI academies, the UAE is cultivating engineers, scientists and domain specialists capable of developing and governing advanced AI systems tailored to regional priorities.

By combining local data, regional infrastructure, global partnerships, and highly skilled teams, the UAE is creating an AI ecosystem designed for scale, sovereignty and success. As AI becomes integral to sectors like energy, finance, healthcare, and telecommunications, the nation's commitment to sovereign AI helps underpin its competitiveness - today and in the years ahead.

— Marc Domenech is Regional Director, Enterprise, NVIDIA.