In a groundbreaking collaboration, leading American technology firms NVIDIA, OpenAI, Cisco, and Oracle are partnering with the United Arab Emirates to develop the “UAE Stargate”-an ambitious artificial intelligence data center project poised to become one of the largest in the world. The facility, set to be constructed in Abu Dhabi by the Emirati company G42, will span an impressive 10 square miles and feature a massive 5-gigawatt power capacity, equivalent to the output of five nuclear reactors.
NVIDIA will supply cutting-edge Blackwell GB300 AI chips to power the data center, underscoring its position as a front-runner in AI hardware technology. OpenAI is expected to be a key anchor tenant, marking a significant expansion of its global AI infrastructure footprint beyond the United States. This project aligns with a broader initiative announced earlier this year by President Donald Trump, who unveiled a related “Stargate” AI infrastructure plan in the U.S., aiming to establish multiple data center campuses across 16 states.
The UAE Stargate initiative represents a strategic effort to accelerate AI development in the Middle East while reinforcing U.S. technological leadership internationally. American firms will oversee data center operations and provide cloud services throughout the region, with robust security measures in place to safeguard U.S. technology from misuse, according to U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik.
This venture coincides with President Trump’s first foreign trip of his second term, which included visits to the UAE and Saudi Arabia, where discussions on AI collaborations and technology investments were prominent. Alongside NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, other global tech leaders such as SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son and Cisco’s Jeetu Patel were also present during the announcement.
The initial phase of the UAE Stargate project will deploy a 1-gigawatt compute cluster, with plans to scale up to the full 5-gigawatt capacity. This scale of infrastructure is unprecedented and surpasses any AI data center capacity previously announced by OpenAI or its competitors.
This partnership not only highlights the UAE’s ambition to become a global AI hub but also reflects a broader geopolitical strategy to counterbalance China’s influence in the Middle East by promoting American technology and expertise in advanced AI systems.
In summary, the UAE Stargate project, backed by NVIDIA, OpenAI, and other major U.S. tech companies, is set to establish one of the world’s largest AI data centers in Abu Dhabi, marking a major milestone in international AI infrastructure development and cooperation.
