AI partnerships between Abu Dhabi entities and OpenAI will span government, energy and investment, following a meeting between His Highness Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Chairman of the Abu Dhabi Executive Council, and Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI.

The meeting explored opportunities to advance cooperation in artificial intelligence (AI). Discussions focused on using advanced AI technologies to support government transformation and innovation across Abu Dhabi’s strategic sectors, in line with the emirate’s economic and development priorities.

They also covered Abu Dhabi’s ambition to strengthen its position as a global hub for AI innovation and deployment, and its goal of becoming the world’s first fully AI-native government. The discussions highlighted progress in applying AI across government services and key economic sectors, backed by investment in digital infrastructure and national talent development.

Following the meeting, Sheikh Khaled witnessed the signing of four agreements between Abu Dhabi-based entities and OpenAI.

ADNOC to deploy OpenAI technology

In the energy sector, ADNOC, G42 through its subsidiary Inception42, and OpenAI signed an agreement for ADNOC to deploy OpenAI’s frontier technology. The agreement makes ADNOC the first company in the energy sector to do so.

The partnership will integrate advanced AI capabilities across ADNOC’s operations. It is intended to support more connected operational, investment and commercial decision-making, while improving efficiency and productivity.

The technology will run on OpenAI’s GPT models using in-country inference infrastructure in the UAE. The partnership supports ADNOC’s ambition to become the world’s most technology- and AI-enabled energy company.

Government initiative begins food-import pilot

Abu Dhabi Government and OpenAI launched the world’s first AI-native Machine-Readable Government initiative. It supports the emirate’s ambition to become the world’s first AI-native government.

The initiative converts a defined set of government policies and regulations into machine-readable form. AI-powered systems can then assist officials with routine regulatory compliance assessments, including those related to permits and certificates. Each assessment is traceable to the relevant rule, while officials retain oversight and accountability for final decisions.

The Department of Government Enablement – Abu Dhabi (DGE) leads and governs the initiative. Its first pilot is in production with the Abu Dhabi Agriculture and Food Safety Authority (ADAFSA), focused on food imports. AI processing uses OpenAI’s UAE inference residency, with real-time model computation running on GPUs in UAE data centres.

Investment and broader AI adoption

Mubadala, Inception42 and OpenAI also signed an agreement to apply advanced AI capabilities to investment analysis, opportunity identification and risk assessment. The work is intended to support informed investment decisions and long-term value creation.

Separately, Inception42 and OpenAI signed a five-year agreement to support frontier AI adoption across government, enterprise and education in the UAE.

Under the agreement, the organisations will work together on enterprise solutions for large UAE organisations. The collaboration combines OpenAI’s frontier models and AI engineering expertise with Inception42’s applied AI capabilities and consultancy-led professional services programmes.

Altman said Abu Dhabi and the UAE were setting a global standard for AI integration across public and private sectors, with the aim of making AI’s benefits accessible to everyone. He added that OpenAI was proud to support the UAE’s ambition, citing a shared commitment to safety, accessibility and responsible innovation.

Together, these AI partnerships reflect Abu Dhabi’s plans to deploy AI at scale across strategic sectors, support productivity and economic competitiveness, and advance a knowledge-based, innovation-driven economy.

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