OPENAI is ready to help develop an amazing campus of 5 Gigawatt Data Center in Abu Dhabi, positioning the company as a main anchor tenant in what could become one of the largest IA infrastructure projects in the world, according to a new Bloomberg report.
The installation covered an astonishing 10 square miles and would consume an equivalent power with five nuclear reactors, eclipizing any existing AI infrastructure announced by Openai or its competitors. (Openai has not yet returned the request for comments from Techcrunch, but to put this in perspective, it’s bigger than Monaco.)
The water project, developed in partnership with G42 – A technological conglomerate based in Abu Dhabi – is part of the ambitious Openai Stargate project, a joint venture announced in January which could see Openai, Softbank and Oracle Build Massive Data around the world is learning with powerful computer chips to support the development of AI.
While the first Openai Stargate campus in the United States – already under development in Abilene, Texas – is expected to reach 1.2 Gigawatts, this counterpart in the Middle East would be more than quadruple this capacity.
The project emerges in the middle of the wider AI between the United States and the United Arab Emirates who have been in preparation for years, and have rendered nervous legislators.
Openai’s relationship with water dates back to a partnership in 2023 with G42 aimed at leading the adoption of AI in the Middle East. At a conference earlier the same year in Abu Dhabi, the CEO of Openai, Sam Altman, praised water, saying that he “talks about AI since he was cool”.
As with a large part of the AI world, these relationships are … complicated. Founded in 2018, G42 is chaired by Sheikh Tahnoon Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, National Security Advisor of Water and Cadet Brother of the country’s leader. His embrace of Openai raised concerns at the end of 2023 among American officials, who feared that the G42 would allow the Chinese government to access advanced American technology.
These concerns focused on G42’s “active relationships” with blacklist entities, including Huawei and Beijing Genomics Institute, as well as links with individuals related to China intelligence.
Following the pressure of the American legislators, the CEO of G42 told Bloomberg in early 2024 that the company deployed its strategy, saying: “All our investments in China which had been made before are already deactivated. For this reason, of course, we no longer need physical presence in China. ”
Shortly after, Microsoft – a large shareholder in Openai with its own broader interests in the region – announced an investment of $ 1.5 billion in the G42, and its president, Brad Smith, joined the G42 board of directors.
