OpenAI is expected to play a central role in the development of a major new data center project in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), according to a Bloomberg News report. The upcoming 5-gigawatt data center campus in Abu Dhabi may rank among the largest globally once completed.
While OpenAI’s participation is not yet finalized, the company is reportedly positioned to be one of the core anchor tenants. A formal announcement is anticipated soon, according to sources cited in the report. OpenAI has not issued a public comment on the development.
Backed by Microsoft, OpenAI is a major player in global AI advancement. Its potential involvement in such a large-scale data infrastructure project signals the growing strategic cooperation between AI developers and countries investing heavily in digital and computational capacity.
UAE steps up AI infrastructure ambitions
The initiative aligns with the UAE’s wider efforts to establish itself as a global AI leader. On Thursday, the UAE and the United States signed an agreement supporting the development of the largest AI campus outside the US. The project is intended to attract top-tier AI firms, researchers, and infrastructure players.
Located in Abu Dhabi, the new data center campus is being designed to provide the massive computational power needed to support large-scale AI model training and inference workloads. If completed as planned, it would significantly boost the region’s AI and cloud capabilities.
OpenAI’s involvement could add technical credibility and accelerate adoption across sectors, especially if integrated with Microsoft’s Azure infrastructure. The announcement also comes at a time when countries are competing to localize high-performance computing resources due to geopolitical, commercial, and data sovereignty considerations.
The UAE’s push reflects a broader trend among Gulf nations to diversify their economies through strategic investments in digital technologies, with AI infrastructure emerging as a key pillar.
