Etisalat UAE has expanded its strategic partnership with DataRobot to build, operate, and govern an agentic AI workforce across its business units under a new multi-year agreement.

The agreement builds on Etisalat UAE’s plans to scale artificial intelligence within a secure environment while strengthening the governance and enterprise capabilities required as AI systems move from generating insights to taking action.

Under the expanded partnership, Etisalat UAE will use capabilities from the DataRobot Agent Workforce Platform as part of its broader sovereign AI ecosystem. The platform will support the development, deployment, and governance of selected agentic AI workloads.

The environment brings predictive, generative, and agentic AI capabilities together under a common governance framework. By keeping sensitive data and AI workloads within its self-managed infrastructure, Etisalat UAE retains control over where AI runs, which data it can access, and how it is governed. This approach supports the company’s on-premises AI sovereignty strategy as it expands its use of AI agents.

Antonietta Mastroianni, Chief Information Officer at Etisalat UAE, said the partnership has strengthened the governance of the company’s growing machine learning portfolio while improving agility.

She noted that the collaboration has enabled teams to develop and deliver models faster, while empowering data scientists and business users through the company’s Citizen Data Scientist Program. The next phase will build on this foundation to expand agentic AI while maintaining enterprise-level trust and governance.

Haissam Hassan, META GM at DataRobot, said Etisalat UAE is combining innovation, sovereignty, and governance as it expands its enterprise AI capabilities. He added that the focus is shifting from building AI agents to deploying them safely within business processes at scale.

Etisalat UAE and DataRobot have worked together since 2022 to expand AI adoption, starting with predictive applications in customer value management. These use cases include churn prevention, upsell and cross-sell targeting, and credit risk optimisation.

The partnership has also supported the development of internal expertise and governance frameworks needed to operationalise AI across the organisation.

Morad Al Shark, Director of AI Engineering & Factory at Etisalat UAE, said the company’s secure machine learning platform has established a foundation for enterprise AI. As the company moves towards agentic AI, it is extending its existing governance, security, and operational practices across a broader AI ecosystem.

Etisalat UAE is also embedding AI expertise within its business units, allowing teams closer to customer, commercial, and operational challenges to take use cases from concept to production.

Supported by departmental AI champions and a governed enterprise sandbox for prototyping, the operating model is intended to help scale agentic AI across customer experience, regulatory compliance, sales effectiveness, and operational efficiency.

Through the expanded agreement, Etisalat UAE and DataRobot aim to extend the company’s existing AI capabilities into governed, action-oriented business applications. The partnership will continue to focus on agentic AI, with an emphasis on secure deployment, enterprise governance, and maintaining control over sensitive data and AI workloads.

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