ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates / RankWire.AI / – Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Chairman of the Abu Dhabi Executive Council, met Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, on Monday to explore opportunities for advancing cooperation in artificial intelligence. Following the meeting, Sheikh Khaled witnessed the signing of four agreements between Abu Dhabi-based entities and OpenAI. The deals span the government, energy and investment sectors.
The meeting focused on using advanced AI technologies to accelerate government transformation and drive innovation across Abu Dhabi’s strategic sectors. Discussions highlighted the emirate’s progress in integrating AI across government services and key economic sectors. That progress is supported by continued investment in digital infrastructure and national talent. Abu Dhabi aims to become the world’s first fully AI-native government, and in 2025 it launched a AED13 billion digital strategy for 2025 to 2027.
Altman said Abu Dhabi and the UAE are setting a bold, global standard for AI integration across the public and private sectors, ensuring the benefits of AI reach everyone. He said OpenAI is proud to support the UAE’s ambition, anchored in a shared commitment to safety, accessibility and responsible innovation. Altman’s visit coincided with ADIPEC, the UAE’s largest oil and gas gathering. Financial terms of the agreements were not disclosed.
ADNOC takes OpenAI into the energy sector
In the energy sector, ADNOC, G42 subsidiary Inception42 and OpenAI signed an agreement that makes ADNOC the first energy company to deploy OpenAI’s frontier technology. The deal will integrate advanced AI across ADNOC’s operations, enabling more connected operational, investment and commercial decisions to improve efficiency and productivity. It will run on OpenAI’s GPT models using in-country inference infrastructure in the UAE. ADNOC aims to become the world’s most technology- and AI-enabled energy company.
Mubadala, Inception42 and OpenAI signed a separate agreement to apply advanced AI to investment analysis, opportunity identification and risk assessment. Inception42 and OpenAI also signed a five-year agreement to support frontier AI adoption across government, enterprise and education in the UAE. The two companies will deliver enterprise solutions for large UAE organizations. They will pair OpenAI’s models and engineering expertise with Inception42’s applied AI and consultancy services.
First machine-readable government pilot
In the government sector, the Abu Dhabi Government and OpenAI launched the world’s first AI-native Machine-Readable Government initiative. It translates a defined set of policies and regulations into machine-readable form, so AI systems can help officials with routine compliance assessments, such as issuing permits and certificates. Each assessment can be traced to the governing rule, and officials keep oversight of final decisions. The Department of Government Enablement leads the initiative.
The first pilot is already in production with the Abu Dhabi Agriculture and Food Safety Authority, focusing on food imports. Processing runs on GPUs in UAE data centers through OpenAI’s UAE inference residency. The agreements build on Stargate UAE, a 1GW AI computing cluster being developed in Abu Dhabi by G42, OpenAI and other partners. Sheikh Khaled also discussed AI cooperation with India during a visit in February.
