Brief
May 2025
UAE–US Partnership Reaches New Frontiers
UAE President Sheikh Mohamed and US President Trump unveiled Phase 1 of a 5 GW AI campus in Abu Dhabi, the largest outside the US. Additional milestones include the UAE’s Lunar Gateway airlock contribution and astronaut role in Artemis, the US revamping AI chip export rules and G42–Cisco advancing AI infrastructure collaboration.
1 big thing: UAE and US Unveil Phase 1 of 5 GW AI Campus in Abu Dhabi
At a ceremony at Qasr Al Watan, UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed and US President Donald Trump unveiled Phase 1 of a monumental 5 GW UAE–US AI campus, the largest outside the US. Built by G42 and managed by US partners such as OpenAI, Oracle, NVIDIA, Cisco and SoftBank, the 10-square-mile site delivers regional compute capacity powered by nuclear, solar and gas.
Why it matters
- The campus cements the UAE’s role as a global AI infrastructure hub, extending US tech capacity across the Middle East, Africa and South Asia.
- It enables American hyperscalers to deliver low-latency services to the Global South, enhancing digital reach and security.
- Built under the UAE-US AI Acceleration Partnership, the campus reinforces strategic trust—showing how the UAE is supporting the US in the global AI race.
Additional stories shaping the UAE–US economic partnership:
Artificial Intelligence
The US is rescinding the Biden-era AI Diffusion export rule limiting AI chip access globally.
The Trump administration plans to replace the tiered system with a simpler licensing framework, aiming to streamline exports and spur domestic AI innovation.
Artificial Intelligence
G42 and Cisco signed an MoU to deepen their strategic collaboration in AI infrastructure and innovation.
The partnership will explore joint go-to-market AI solutions, co-develop secure AI architectures and support AI-ready data centers in the UAE and beyond.
Space
The UAE will develop and deliver a crew-and-science airlock module for NASA’s Lunar Gateway, part of the Artemis program.
This marks the UAE’s most significant hardware contribution to space exploration. An Emirati astronaut is also expected to join the mission by 2030.