# The Gulf’s big bet on AI

URL: https://ai-pulse.aglaganova.com/blog/the-gulfs-big-bet-on-ai
Published: 2026-10-09
Author: Roman Aglaganov, Full-stack developer
Category: Industry
Region: Middle East & Africa
Tags: chips, open-weights

> Oil-rich Gulf states are spending heavily to become AI powers, from open-source models in Abu Dhabi to some of the largest data-centre projects on the planet.

![The Abu Dhabi skyline across blue water on a sunny day](https://ai-pulse.aglaganova.com/api/media/file/abu-dhabi-1.jpg)

In 2017, the United Arab Emirates appointed the world’s first government minister for artificial intelligence. At the time it sounded like a futuristic job title. Eight years and many billions of dollars later, it looks more like a statement of intent.

## Models made in Abu Dhabi

Abu Dhabi’s Technology Innovation Institute builds the Falcon family of language models and releases many of them openly. In 2023, Falcon 40B briefly topped Hugging Face’s leaderboard of open models, followed by the much larger Falcon 180B. The emirate also founded MBZUAI, a graduate university dedicated entirely to AI, in 2019.

## Compute on a national scale

The Gulf’s bigger advantage is the raw ingredients of modern AI: capital and cheap energy. In 2024, Microsoft invested $1.5 billion in G42, Abu Dhabi’s leading AI company. In May 2025, G42 and OpenAI announced Stargate UAE, a 1-gigawatt computing cluster in Abu Dhabi with partners including Oracle, Nvidia, Cisco and SoftBank, planned as part of a much larger 5-gigawatt UAE–US AI campus.

Saudi Arabia is moving too: in May 2025 its sovereign wealth fund launched HUMAIN, a company meant to build AI models and infrastructure in the kingdom.

## Why the Gulf, and why now

For countries that built their wealth on oil, AI is a way to diversify before the oil age winds down. Data centres need enormous amounts of electricity, and the Gulf has energy, land and money in abundance. What it needs from abroad is chips and talent, which is why so many of these deals come bundled with agreements on US chip exports and partnerships with American companies.

**The bottom line:** the map of AI power is no longer just Silicon Valley and Beijing. Some of the world’s biggest AI computers may soon sit in the desert, cooled at considerable expense.

## Sources

- [Technology Innovation Institute: Falcon models](https://falconllm.tii.ae)
- [OpenAI: Introducing Stargate UAE](https://openai.com/index/introducing-stargate-uae/)