OpenAI CEO Meets With UAE to Promote AI Ambitions

OpenAI’s CEO has reportedly met with the UAE’s president to discuss the country’s artificial intelligence (AI) ambitions.

That’s according to a report Saturday (Sept. 27) from Reuters, citing the United Arab Emirates (UAE) state news agency.

According to the report, the talks between Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman focused on boosting cooperation between OpenAI and its counterparts in the UAE, especially in the field of AI research and its practical applications.

“This cooperation aligns with the UAE’s ambition to establish an integrated AI ecosystem, supporting the country’s development plans and its drive to build a knowledge-based economy,” the agency said.

Reuters noted that the UAE, a major oil producer, is developing one of the largest AI data centers in the world, as well as a new Arabic-language AI model.

In addition, the UAE has been working to use its strong relationship with the U.S. to gain access to AI technology. The two countries signed an agreement in May that will see the UAE construct one of the biggest AI campuses outside the U.S. in a deal was announced during President Donald Trump’s trip to Abu Dhabi.

As PYMNTS wrote earlier this year, both the UAE and Saudi Arabia are racing to build data centers at scale as the countries compete for AI supremacy in the Middle East.

“As of early 2025, Saudi Arabia had existing data center capacity of more than 300 megawatts, which is competitive with UAE’s capacity of more than 250 megawatts, according to ResearchAndMarkets.com,” the report said.

“But when it comes to future projects, Saudi Arabia blows away the UAE: It has upcoming capacity of 2,200 megawatts while the UAE is expecting about 500 megawatts.”

Meanwhile, data from the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) shows that AI preparedness in the region can vary by quite a lot. Israel is in first place here, followed by UAE and Saudi Arabia. Aside from Qatar, Oman and Bahrain, the remaining countries “drop off considerably in the rankings,” PYMNTS wrote.

In other AI news, PYMNTS wrote last week about the launch of the latest version of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and how it fits in with Altman’s vision of developing infrastructure that makes intelligence “abundant.”

“That ambition is being matched by industrial-scale investment, including Nvidia’s planned $100 billion commitment to expand OpenAI’s compute capacity, a deal that cements both companies as central players in generative AI,” the report added.