OpenAI signs four Abu Dhabi agreements, including an ADNOC and G42 deployment with in-country inference

OpenAI signed four agreements with Abu Dhabi-based entities on Monday, the Abu Dhabi Media Office said, after OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman met Crown Prince Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. The Media Office described the deals as spanning the government, energy and investment sectors. None of the announcements and reports reviewed gave financial terms.

The first agreement involves ADNOC, G42 (through its subsidiary Inception42) and OpenAI. The Media Office said it makes ADNOC the first company in the energy sector to deploy OpenAI’s frontier technology, running on OpenAI’s GPT models with in-country inference infrastructure in the UAE. Reuters reported that the deal was signed at the ADIPEC energy conference in Abu Dhabi and that ADNOC chief executive Sultan Al Jaber made the same “first” claim.

The second is a government initiative. Abu Dhabi’s government and OpenAI launched what the Media Office called the “world’s first AI-native Machine-Readable Government initiative,” which translates a defined set of policies and regulations into machine-readable form so AI systems can assist officials with routine compliance assessments, such as permits and certificates. The Media Office said each assessment is traceable to the governing rule and that officials keep oversight and accountability for final decisions. A pilot with the Abu Dhabi Agriculture and Food Safety Authority, focused on food imports, is already in production, it said.

The third is an investment agreement. Mubadala, Inception42 and OpenAI will apply AI to investment analysis, opportunity identification and risk assessment, according to the Media Office.

The fourth is a five-year agreement between Inception42 and OpenAI to support AI adoption across government, enterprise and education in the UAE, including enterprise solutions for large organizations.

Altman said in a statement that Abu Dhabi and the UAE are “setting a bold, global standard for AI integration across both the public and private sectors.” CNBC reported that the signings come as OpenAI works to secure funding from regional investors, and noted that it reported on Saturday that OpenAI is seeking up to $20 billion in a round co-led by UAE investors. Reuters said OpenAI is also a partner in the first phase of a 5-gigawatt AI data center project the UAE is building with U.S. technology companies.

OpenAI signs four Abu Dhabi agreements, including an ADNOC and G42 deployment with in-country inference

Sources