UAE Emerges as Global AI and Digital Infrastructure Hub in 2025
Abu Dhabi, The Gulf Observer: The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has strengthened its position as a leading global digital infrastructure hub in 2025, achieving a world-leading 97 percent utilisation rate of artificial intelligence (AI) tools across government entities, while the number of programmers in the country surpassed 450,000.
The year saw landmark international partnerships, including the establishment of a 5-gigawatt UAE–US AI Campus in Abu Dhabi. Powered by nuclear, solar, and gas energy, the campus houses the largest supercomputing cluster outside the United States, serving billions of users worldwide.
In parallel, the UAE launched the “Stargate UAE” project, a 1-gigawatt initiative involving G42, OpenAI, Oracle, Cisco, SoftBank, and Nvidia. Leveraging advanced NVIDIA Grace Blackwell GB300 systems, the project’s first phase is scheduled for 2026.
Strategic cooperation extended to Europe through a UAE–France AI framework, featuring a 1-gigawatt data centre and joint projects in renewable energy, advanced semiconductors, and shared research platforms.
On the investment front, UAE-based MGX joined BlackRock, Global Infrastructure Partners, Microsoft, Nvidia, and xAI in an “AI Infrastructure Partnership,” targeting next-generation data centres and energy solutions with potential investments of up to $100 billion.
The UAE also advanced the global development agenda by committing $1 billion to the “AI for Development” initiative at the G20 summit to support projects across Africa, and partnering with the Gates Foundation on a $200 million AI ecosystem to enhance agricultural development worldwide.
Domestically, total AI-related investments for 2024–2025 exceeded AED543 billion, with major global firms, including Microsoft and KKR, announcing significant projects in the UAE.
Technological breakthroughs included the debut of Jais 2, a 70-billion-parameter language model trained on the largest Arabic-first dataset ever assembled—600 billion Arabic tokens—and the introduction of K2 Think, an advanced open-source AI reasoning system.
To align AI systems with national values, the UAE launched the “AI in the Ring” index, the world’s first test to measure how closely technological models reflect the country’s culture and societal values. A national study also confirmed that 44 percent of UAE entities now employ high-performance computing across 91 specialised use cases in healthcare, finance, and security.
In the public sector, the government introduced the world’s first AI-driven legislative system to analyse laws and policy impacts, alongside an AI HR assistant serving over 50,000 employees and automating 108 government services. In education, Hamdan Bin Mohammed Smart University reported a 95 percent reduction in faculty workload through AI agents, alongside measurable improvements in student outcomes.
Furthermore, the UAE Cabinet launched a Cybersecurity Excellence Centre in partnership with Google Cloud, expected to create over 20,000 jobs and strengthen the national cybersecurity ecosystem.
The UAE’s achievements in AI and digital infrastructure reflect the country’s strategic vision to become a global leader in innovation, technology, and smart governance.
