UAE marks 2025 with strategic AI transformation, infrastructure leadership

  The United Arab Emirates solidified its position as a global digital infrastructure hub in 2025, recording a world-leading 97 percent utilisation rate of artificial intelligence tools across government entities, while the number of programmers in the country exceeded 450,000. 

The year was defined by high-stakes international partnerships, most notably the establishment of a 5-gigawatt UAE–US AI Campus in Abu Dhabi. Serving billions of users through a mix of nuclear, solar, and gas power, the site represents the largest supercomputing cluster outside the United States. 

This was complemented by the launch of the "Stargate UAE" project, a 1-gigawatt initiative involving G42, OpenAI, Oracle, Cisco, SoftBank, and Nvidia. Utilising advanced NVIDIA Grace Blackwell GB300 systems, the project’s first phase is slated for 2026. 

Strategic cooperation also expanded to Europe through a UAE–France AI framework, which includes a dedicated 1-gigawatt data centre alongside joint projects in renewable energy, advanced semiconductors and shared research platforms. 

On the investment front, UAE-based MGX has joined BlackRock, Global Infrastructure Partners, Microsoft, Nvidia, and xAI in an "AI Infrastructure Partnership" targeting next-generation data centres and energy solutions, with potential investments reaching $100 billion. 

The UAE also leveraged AI for international development, committing $1 billion to the "AI for Development" initiative at the G20 summit to support projects across Africa, and partnering with the Gates Foundation on a $200 million AI ecosystem to support global agricultural development. 

Domestically, total AI-related investments for 2024-2025 exceeded AED543 billion, with global firms including Microsoft and KKR announcing major investments in the UAE. 

Technological advancements included the debut of Jais 2, a 70-billion-parametre language model trained on the largest Arabic-first dataset ever assembled — 600 billion Arabic tokens, a scale no other institution has attempted. The UAE also introduced the K2 Think, a leading open-source system for advanced AI reasoning.

To ensure cultural alignment, the country launched the "AI in the Ring" index, the world’s first test that measures how closely tech models reflect the nation’s culture and values. 

A national study confirmed that 44 percent of entities in the UAE now utilise high-performance computing across 91 specialised use cases in healthcare, finance, and security. 

In the public sector, the government introduced the world’s first AI-driven legislative system to analyse laws and policy impacts. It also launched an AI HR assistant, which serves over 50,000 employees and automates 108 government services. 

In education, Hamdan Bin Mohammed Smart University reported a 95 percent reduction in faculty workload through the deployment of AI agents, alongside a marked improvement in student outcomes. 

The UAE Cabinet also launched a Cybersecurity Excellence Centre in partnership with Google Cloud, which is expected to create more than 20,000 jobs and strengthen the national cybersecurity ecosystem. 

WAM