UAE joins the AI superpower race with its 5-gigawatt Stargate project

A massive global AI infrastructure initiative is taking shape as the UAE launches a 5-gigawatt data center project with backing from America’s technology giants. This new “UAE Stargate” development creates a parallel system to Trump’s domestic US Stargate initiative, establishing what appears to be the beginning of a coordinated international AI infrastructure alliance to meet the exponentially growing compute demands of advanced artificial intelligence systems.

The big picture: US tech giants Nvidia, Cisco, Oracle, and OpenAI are backing the new ‘UAE Stargate’ artificial intelligence data center project in Abu Dhabi, developed by Emirati tech firm G42.

• The massive data center campus will cover 10 square miles with a total capacity of 5 gigawatts, beginning with a 1-gigawatt compute cluster in its first phase.
• Nvidia will provide its latest Blackwell GB300 systems to power the initial development of the project.

Strategic alignment: The UAE project directly connects with the US-based Stargate infrastructure initiative launched by President Trump after his January inauguration.

• The Stargate initiative has an estimated long-term cost of $500 billion, with $100 billion already allocated for its early phases.
• The core plan involves building a network of AI data centers across the US to support growing AI demands in research, healthcare, automation, defense, and finance.

Key players: The US Stargate project is being led by OpenAI, with crucial partnerships from SoftBank and Oracle.

• OpenAI is contributing AI models and technical leadership to the initiative.
• SoftBank is providing funding and strategic support, while Oracle will manage large portions of the backend architecture.

Global expansion: While initially focused on the US, the Stargate initiative is already extending internationally.

• Europe is considered a key strategic location, with the UK potentially leading international expansion efforts.
• OpenAI recently announced ‘OpenAI for Countries’ to facilitate infrastructure partnerships with national governments for building local AI data center capacity.

Why this matters: The AI boom is creating unprecedented demand for specialized computing infrastructure that traditional data centers cannot adequately support.

• Stargate aims to solve this bottleneck by developing purpose-built infrastructure specifically designed for AI workloads.
• The UAE partnership represents a significant step toward establishing a coordinated global network of high-capacity AI computing resources.