Construction is underway on Stargate UAE, a 1 gigawatt data center project in Abu Dhabi that will anchor a mammoth planned UAE-US AI Campus.
The first 20% of the site — developed by G42’s Khazna Data Centers with participation from OpenAI, Oracle, and Nvidia — is on schedule to open in 2026. G42 is in advanced talks with Google, Microsoft, AMD, Cerebras Systems, and Qualcomm to be part of the campus, Semafor previously reported.
Progress comes as US export rules for cutting-edge chips remain undefined. Former US energy and infrastructure envoy Amos Hochstein has thrown his support behind the Gulf getting chips: “I’d rather work with the UAE than with Spain… they’ve put Huawei in their intelligence systems,” he said Thursday at Semafor’s World Economy Summit. The US has “never been able to restrict technology,” he added, and should instead aggressively court allies that could otherwise fall into China’s sphere of influence.