The UAE achieved 97% AI adoption in 2025, launching global partnerships and massive infrastructure projects driving AI transformation.
ABU DHABI: The United Arab Emirates has emerged as a global powerhouse in artificial intelligence and digital infrastructure in 2025, achieving a 97 percent AI adoption rate across government entities and surpassing 450,000 registered programmers nationwide.
Key highlights included the launch of the 5-gigawatt UAE–US AI Campus in Abu Dhabi, now the world’s largest supercomputing cluster outside the United States, powered by nuclear, solar, and gas sources. This was followed by the announcement of Stargate UAE, a 1-gigawatt AI project involving G42, OpenAI, Oracle, Cisco, SoftBank, and Nvidia, using NVIDIA’s Grace Blackwell GB300 systems, with its first phase expected in 2026.
Further expanding its AI footprint, the UAE unveiled a strategic AI framework with France, which includes a 1-gigawatt data centre and projects in semiconductors, renewables, and research. On a global scale, UAE-based MGX joined major firms including BlackRock and Microsoft in a $100 billion “AI Infrastructure Partnership” for next-generation data and energy systems.
The nation also committed $1 billion to the G20-backed “AI for Development” initiative to fund African projects and partnered with the Gates Foundation on a $200 million global agricultural AI programme.
Domestically, AED543 billion in AI-related investments were made during 2024–2025. Innovations included the launch of Jais 2, a 70-billion-parameter Arabic AI model trained on 600 billion Arabic tokens, and K2 Think, a new open-source AI reasoning system.
To safeguard cultural integrity, the UAE introduced the “AI in the Ring” index, the world’s first system to assess alignment of AI models with national values. The country also debuted the world’s first AI-driven legislative tool and automated 108 public services.
The education sector reported a 95 percent drop in faculty workload at Hamdan Bin Mohammed Smart University due to AI agents, and the Cybersecurity Excellence Centre, in partnership with Google Cloud, is expected to generate over 20,000 jobs.
