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UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan (R) welcomes U.S. President Donald Trump upon arrival at the presidential terminal in Abu Dhabi on May 15, 2025.Anadolu | Anadolu | Getty Images
The U.S. and United Arab Emirates are partnering on a massive artificial intelligence campus touted as the largest such facility outside the U.S., the White House said Thursday.
The Abu Dhabi data center will be built by the Emirate firm G42, which will partner with several U.S. companies on the facility, according to the release from the Department of Commerce. It will have a 5-gigawatt capacity and cover 10 square miles.
The names of the U.S. companies were not disclosed.
Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son and Cisco President Jeetu Patel were all in the UAE for President Donald Trump’s visit.
“In the UAE, American companies will operate the data centers and offer American-managed cloud services throughout the region,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik said in the release. “The agreement also contains strong security guarantees to prevent diversion of U.S. technology.”
The announcement comes as Trump visited the UAE as part of a broader trip to the Middle East, where he met with heads of state and announced several deals.
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The first phase of the UAE project includes a 1-gigawatt AI data center.
UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who attended the unveiling with Trump, said the partnership strengthens the region’s position “as a hub for cutting-edge research and sustainable development.”
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