U.S. tech giants launch UAE Stargate AI data centre to boost global AI presence
U.S. tech giants Nvidia, Cisco, Oracle and OpenAI are backing a new artificial intelligence data centre announced in Abu Dhabi.
The “UAE Stargate” project revealed by the U.S. Commerce Department during President Donald Trump’s first state visit of his second term on April 30, 2025, will be built by the Emirati firm G42.
The extensive facility, which will span 10 square miles and have a capacity of 5 gigawatts, will work with a parallel U.S. Stargate AI infrastructure project announced shortly after Trump’s inauguration in January.
Nvidia will provide its latest Blackwell GB300 systems for the project, which will include a 1-gigawatt compute cluster in its first phase.
The high-profile U.S. delegation to the UAE included the aforementioned tech leaders, as well as Trump administration officials, during a diplomatic trip that also included a visit to Saudi Arabia.
The UAE Stargate initiative is designed to position the UAE as a key player in the global AI landscape and is part of a broader surge in AI investment across the Middle East.
While in the region, Huang also announced a deal for Nvidia to supply 18,000 Blackwell chips to the Saudi company Humain for data centres totalling 500 megawatts. AMD is also involved in that project.
This activity comes amid changes to U.S. export regulations for advanced semiconductors. The Trump administration is rescinding the previous “Biden diffusion rule” which had made it more difficult for Gulf nations to access advanced AI chips.
As a result, Gulf nations are projected to be able to import 500,000 Nvidia AI chips annually from 2025. The Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick endorsed the UAE chip deal as a significant step towards achieving U.S. dominance in AI.
He emphasised strong security guarantees to ensure the technology does not fall into the wrong hands.
