On May 26, 2025, a monumental shift in global AI infrastructure quietly took shape in the desert city of Abu Dhabi. OpenAI, one of the world’s leading artificial intelligence firms, announced a sweeping partnership with the United Arab Emirates to build Stargate UAE—a colossal one-gigawatt AI data center designed to rival the computing power of entire nations. With 200 megawatts scheduled to come online within the next year, this project represents not only a leap in capacity, but a statement of global ambition.
The collaboration is part of OpenAI’s new “OpenAI for Countries” program, which seeks to provide national-scale AI compute capabilities to governments that wish to become serious players in the AI economy. The UAE, already known for its aggressive tech investments and smart city initiatives, has seized the opportunity to become a central hub in the global AI landscape. The Stargate project is set to accelerate the country’s already advanced digital transformation efforts while serving as a magnet for talent, innovation, and geopolitical influence.
At its core, Stargate is not just a data center. It is a launchpad for sovereign AI capabilities, enabling the UAE to train massive language models, deploy agentic systems across industries, and participate in the next era of algorithmic governance. From national security to public health, from autonomous infrastructure to language and culture modeling, the facility’s computational backbone will allow the country to pursue AI at scale, with a level of control and independence that few nations possess.
For OpenAI, this venture demonstrates a strategic pivot. By partnering with countries instead of corporations, the organization is helping to shape how AI infrastructure is distributed globally. Rather than concentrating compute power in Silicon Valley or Beijing, Stargate signals a potential multipolar future where AI capability is built in collaboration with governments—raising both opportunities and questions about alignment, ethics, and control.
With the first phase nearing activation, the world will be watching closely. Stargate UAE may become a blueprint for how AI is rolled out on a national level. Or it may ignite new debates over the risks of AI centralization. Either way, on this day, a new chapter in the geopolitics of intelligence has begun.