Sheikh Khaled meets Sam Altman, witnesses signing of agreements with OpenAI
- Last updated: November 2, 2026 | 11:44
Sheikh Khaled Bin Mohamed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Chairman of the Abu Dhabi Executive Council, has met with Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, to explore opportunities for advancing cooperation in artificial intelligence (AI).
The meeting focused on leveraging advanced AI technologies to accelerate government transformation and drive innovation across Abu Dhabi's strategic sectors, in line with the emirate's economic and development priorities and its ambition to strengthen its position as a global hub for AI innovation and deployment.
Discussions also highlighted Abu Dhabi's progress in integrating AI across government services and key economic sectors, supported by continued investment in digital infrastructure and national talent development, as part of its goal to become the world's first fully AI-native government.
Following the meeting, Sheikh Khaled witnessed the signing of four agreements between Abu Dhabi-based entities and OpenAI, spanning the government, energy and investment sectors.
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, said, "Abu Dhabi and the UAE are setting a bold, global standard for AI integration across both the public and private sectors to make sure the benefits of AI reach everyone. We are proud to support the UAE's ambition, anchored in a shared commitment to safety, accessibility and responsible innovation."
In the energy sector, ADNOC, G42 (through subsidiary company Inception42) and OpenAI signed a landmark agreement making ADNOC the first company in the energy sector to deploy OpenAI's frontier technology.
The agreement will integrate advanced AI capabilities across ADNOC's operations, enabling more connected operational, investment and commercial decision-making to enhance efficiency and productivity.
Deployed on OpenAI's GPT models using in-country inference infrastructure in the UAE, this partnership marks another important step as ADNOC delivers on its ambition to become the world's most technology- and AI-enabled energy company.
In the government sector, Abu Dhabi Government and OpenAI have launched the world's first AI-native Machine-Readable Government initiative, a key step towards the emirate's ambition to become the world's first AI-native government.
The initiative translates a defined set of government policies and regulations into machine-readable form, enabling AI-powered systems to assist officials with routine regulatory compliance assessments, including those related to issuing permits and certificates. Each assessment is traceable to the governing rule, while government officials retain oversight and accountability for final decisions.
Led and governed by the Department of Government Enablement - Abu Dhabi (DGE), MRG's first pilot is already in production with the Abu Dhabi Agriculture and Food Safety Authority (ADAFSA), focused on food imports. AI processing is powered by OpenAI's UAE inference residency, with real-time model computation running on GPUs within UAE data centres.
In the investment sector, Mubadala, Inception42 and OpenAI signed an agreement to apply advanced AI capabilities to investment analysis, opportunity identification and risk assessment, supporting more informed investment decisions and long-term value creation.
In addition, Inception42 and OpenAI signed a five-year agreement to enable the adoption of frontier AI across government, enterprise and education.
Under the agreement, OpenAI and Inception42 will jointly support AI adoption across government, enterprise and education in the UAE. They will collaborate to deliver enterprise solutions for large UAE organisations, pairing OpenAI's frontier models and AI engineering expertise with Inception42's applied AI capabilities and consultancy-led professional services programmes.
Together, these agreements reflect Abu Dhabi's commitment to moving beyond AI adoption towards its deployment at scale across strategic sectors, driving productivity, strengthening economic competitiveness and advancing a knowledge-based, innovation-driven economy.
WAM