The United Arab Emirates is quietly revising plans for a 5-gigawatt AI data center project – one of the biggest outside the U.S. – after the Iran war prompted a rethink of how and where critical infrastructure should be built, six people familiar with the matter told Reuters.
Originally envisaged as a 10-square-mile (26-square-kilometer) campus in Abu Dhabi, the project will now likely comprise a network of data centers spread across the UAE, according to four of the sources, who all spoke on condition of anonymity.
Authorities are also considering ways to better protect the facilities from drone and missile attacks, including with air defenses and by building some underground, they said. The likely modifications to the project’s blueprint have not previously been reported.
DATA CENTER PROJECT IS CENTRAL TO UAE’S GLOBAL AI AMBITIONS
Plans for the UAE-US AI Campus, which is being built in partnership with American tech companies, were announced during President Donald Trump’s visit last year to the wealthy Gulf state.
The project is central to the UAE’s ambitions to become a global AI powerhouse as it shifts its economy away from oil. It is led by G42, an AI firm controlled by Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed al Nahyan, the UAE national security adviser and brother of its president.
In return for access to Nvidia (NVDA.O), opens new tab AI chips and other advanced U.S. technology, the UAE agreed to cut AI ties with China and invest in the Stargate initiative’s American data centers. Stargate is a joint venture between OpenAI, Oracle (ORCL.N), opens new tab and SoftBank (9984.T), opens new tab to build AI infrastructure.
The people who spoke to Reuters included a U.S. official, a Western diplomat and industry executives briefed on the deliberations. The news agency could not determine how close Emirati authorities are to finalizing a new masterplan or the extent to which the proposed changes might affect construction costs and timelines.
Construction on the first phase of the project, a $30-billion, 1-gigawatt compute cluster known as Stargate UAE, began last year with the first 200 megawatts of capacity due to come online this year. When completed, it will have enough capacity to connect every UAE government agency and commercial institution to the world’s most advanced AI models, according to Larry Ellison, chairman and chief technology officer at Oracle, which is partnering with G42 on the project.
Responding to Reuters questions about potential revisions to the project, G42 said work on the AI campus was progressing as planned.
“The project’s specifics are subject to continuous review in line with the security, resilience and operational standards expected of critical infrastructure at this scale,” the company said without elaborating.
OpenAI said it was working with the UAE to achieve its AI vision and making “good progress on the infrastructure and adoption priorities needed to deliver it.”
The Emirati advanced technology ministry and the project’s other American partners – Nvidia, Oracle and Cisco (CSCO.O), opens new tab – did not respond to comment requests. Japan’s SoftBank declined to comment.
