Abu Dhabi has signed four landmark agreements with San Francisco-based OpenAI to deploy AI across government, energy, investment and education. The deals, which represent one of the most significant embeddings of frontier AI into a sovereign economy, include:

• ADNOC: OpenAI Frontier to be deployed across operations to drive efficiencies — the first energy company in the world to use the enterprise platform
• Abu Dhabi Government: Joint Machine-Readable Government initiative with OpenAI to integrate public policies into AI-readable formats
• Mubadala, Inception42: Advanced OpenAI capabilities to be integrated across investment analysis and risk assessment
• Inception42: Five-year agreement with OpenAI to drive AI adoption across the government, private sector and education
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HH Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Chairman of the Abu Dhabi Executive Council, and OpenAI Founder and CEO Sam Altman announced the deals in Abu Dhabi, ahead of Altman’s appearance at ADIPEC.

Why This Matters

AI has become a defining pillar of the UAE-US relationship. Bilateral frameworks and strong safeguards allow US firms to scale in the UAE, while UAE capital flows back into the US to support their growth at home. OpenAI is a prime example of this. Abu Dhabi is a long-time backer of OpenAI, having invested in its flagship Stargate initiative and co-led the firm’s $122 billion March funding round. These four new deals in turn cement the UAE as a core deployment market for the company.

As Abu Dhabi works to become the world's first AI-native government, the emirate is moving beyond AI adoption to AI deployment — with American tech and OpenAI as the foundation.

"We are proud to support the UAE’s ambition, anchored in a shared commitment to safety, accessibility and responsible innovation.” — Sam Altman, Co-founder and CEO, OpenAI