[HONG KONG] OpenAI plans to help develop a massive new data centre in the United Arab Emirates that may eventually be one of the largest in the world, a major bet on the Middle East and a significant expansion of the company’s global artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure ambitions.
The ChatGPT maker is expected to be one of the primary anchor tenants for a recently announced 5-gigawatt (GW) data centre campus in Abu Dhabi, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because the plans are not public. OpenAI’s participation is not yet finalised, said the people, but a formal announcement may come in the near term.
Once completed, the sprawling facility would cover 10 square miles and use roughly as much power as five nuclear reactors – far larger than any site the ChatGPT maker or its closest rivals have announced to date. Not all of the 5 GW will go to OpenAI, one person said, but rather be shared by multiple firms. Bloomberg News previously reported that OpenAI was weighing a facility in the UAE.
US and UAE officials said on Thursday (May 15) that G42, the Abu Dhabi-based AI company with historic ties to China, would be building a 5-GW data centre in collaboration with several unnamed US companies. The news came the same day that US President Donald Trump visited the country as part of his deal-making tour of the Middle East. Officials on the ground were still in negotiations about potential AI deals for the UAE during the president’s visit.
MGX, an Abu Dhabi investment vehicle, is also considering participating in the data centre project alongside OpenAI and G42, one person said. Other US partners may get involved too, the person said.
OpenAI declined to comment. Representatives for G42, MGX and the US Commerce Department did not respond to requests for comment.
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The planned campus is part of OpenAI’s Stargate initiative to support AI development, two people said. OpenAI, SoftBank Group and Oracle announced Stargate alongside Trump in January, and said the joint venture would invest up to US$500 billion in US projects over the next four years. Earlier this month, OpenAI said it was looking to partner with international governments to develop more AI data centres beyond the US and promote American leadership in the field.
With the UAE project, OpenAI will effectively help the Middle East rapidly gain ground in offering the infrastructure needed for AI services – and also achieve an ambitious goal that the company had originally set for the US. Late last year, OpenAI pitched the Biden administration on the need for data centres with capacity as high as 5 GW – an unprecedented target that raised questions about how to power such facilities. Now it’s participating in a project of a similar scale abroad before getting a comparably sized one off the ground in the US.
OpenAI’s first Stargate campus in the US is expected to be 1.2 GW. The company also plans to build as many as 10 more sites on American soil.
The UAE data centre campus is the focal point of a broader bilateral framework to facilitate more AI collaboration between the US and UAE. The accord could involve the sale of more than a million high-end Nvidia chips to the Gulf nation. It’s part of Trump’s broader strategy to accelerate the use of American technology in AI development throughout the world – with the aim of preventing China from capturing Middle Eastern and other markets.
But some officials in the Trump administration are worried about the strategic implications of what they consider an offshoring of American AI capabilities, according to people familiar with the matter. The officials have also raised national security concerns about sharing advanced US semiconductors, the gold standard for developing and training AI models, with companies and countries that have deep China ties, Bloomberg News reported.
OpenAI has had a long relationship with the UAE, dating back to a 2023 partnership with G42. MGX participated in OpenAI’s US$6.6 billion funding round that closed in October and also plans to contribute to Stargate. BLOOMBERG
