The United Arab Emirates reinforced its standing as a global centre for artificial intelligence and digital infrastructure in 2025, recording a world-leading 97 percent utilisation rate of AI tools across government entities and surpassing 450,000 programmers nationwide.
The year was marked by a series of high-profile international partnerships and large-scale infrastructure commitments that positioned the country at the centre of the global AI compute landscape. Foremost among these was the establishment of a 5-gigawatt UAE–US AI Campus in Abu Dhabi, designed to serve billions of users and powered by a diversified energy mix spanning nuclear, solar, and gas. The site is set to become the largest supercomputing cluster outside the United States.
This momentum continued with the launch of Stargate UAE, a 1-gigawatt AI infrastructure initiative involving G42, OpenAI, Oracle, Cisco, SoftBank, and Nvidia. The project will deploy advanced NVIDIA Grace Blackwell GB300 systems, with its first phase scheduled to go live in 2026.
The UAE also deepened strategic cooperation with Europe through a UAE–France AI framework, which includes plans for a dedicated 1-gigawatt data centre, alongside joint initiatives in renewable energy, advanced semiconductors, and shared AI research platforms.
On the investment front, Abu Dhabi-based MGX joined forces with BlackRock, Global Infrastructure Partners, Microsoft, Nvidia, and xAI to form an AI Infrastructure Partnership targeting next-generation data centres and energy solutions, with potential investments reaching $100 billion.
Beyond commercial development, the UAE expanded the use of AI as a tool for international development. At the G20 summit, the country committed $1 billion to an AI for Development initiative supporting projects across Africa, and partnered with the Gates Foundation on a $200 million AI ecosystem aimed at advancing global agricultural development.
Domestically, total AI-related investments during 2024–2025 exceeded AED 543 billion, with global firms including Microsoft and KKR announcing major commitments in the country.
Technological progress was underscored by the release of Jais 2, a 70-billion-parameter language model trained on 600 billion Arabic tokens, making it the largest Arabic-first dataset ever assembled. The UAE also introduced K2 Think, an open-source system designed for advanced AI reasoning. To ensure cultural alignment, the country launched the AI in the Ring Index, the world’s first benchmark assessing how closely AI models reflect national values and cultural context.
A national study further found that 44 percent of UAE entities now use high-performance computing, spanning 91 specialised use cases across healthcare, finance, and security.
In the public sector, the government introduced the world’s first AI-driven legislative system, designed to analyse laws and assess policy impact. It also deployed an AI-powered HR assistant serving more than 50,000 government employees and automating 108 services.
AI adoption also delivered measurable gains in education. Hamdan Bin Mohammed Smart University reported a 95 percent reduction in faculty workload following the deployment of AI agents, alongside improved student outcomes.
Cybersecurity emerged as another national priority, with the UAE Cabinet launching a Cybersecurity Excellence Centre in partnership with Google Cloud. The initiative is expected to create over 20,000 jobs while strengthening the country’s cybersecurity ecosystem.
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