OpenAI is partnering with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) firm G42 to construct a 1-gigawatt artificial intelligence (AI) data center in Abu Dhabi.
The new project, dubbed Stargate UAE, will be OpenAI’s first data center project outside of the United States. The first part of the data center encompassing 200 megawatts is slated to be completed by the end of 2026, although the full project has yet to have a scheduled completion date.
The buildings’ construction will be funded by G42 while the data center will be operated by OpenAI and the tech company Oracle; the budget for the project was not disclosed. Other companies involved in the project include SoftBank, Nvidia and Cisco. As part of the project, an enhanced version of ChatGPT would be available for free across the UAE.
“We hope this will be the first of many OpenAI for Countries collaborations—and we’ve already been engaging with other countries around the world that are interested in building their own Stargates,” said the company in a statement. “As we previously announced, in the initial phase of OpenAI for Countries we aim to pursue 10 partnerships across key countries and regions—laying the foundation for a globally distributed, democratically powered AI network.”
The company added, “Stargate UAE has the potential to provide AI infrastructure and compute capacity within a 2,000-mile radius, reaching up to half the world’s population.”
