UAE’s AI Leader Plans Big US Expansion, Looking Past Iran War
Despite attacks on regional infrastructure, G42 says its data center campus and overseas plans are on track.
Model of a G42 data center to be built in Abu Dhabi. Once completed, it’s slated to host OpenAI and other US tech companies.
Photographer: Giuseppe Cacace/AFP/Getty Images
Peng Xiao started the year riding high. G42, the Abu Dhabi technology conglomerate he runs, had just won approval to import thousands of the latest artificial intelligence chips and begun talks to buy many more. Xiao was also gearing up for global expansion, taking his company to new markets and aiming to make a splash in the US. Most immediately, G42 was preparing to break ground on one of the world’s largest AI data center projects: a five-gigawatt campus in the United Arab Emirates that would host OpenAI and other Silicon Valley titans.
“There’s a reason that everyone from Sam Altman to Elon Musk comes to this region and talks to us,” Xiao said during a January interview at his beachfront office. “The US, as a home base, cannot provide everything they need.”