Microsoft to invest $15 billion in the UAE AI industry

Microsoft aims to increase its total investment in the UAE to $15 billion by 2029, according to Reuters. This comes as the company has secured permission to export Nvidia chips for its data centers in the UAE, seeking to expand its presence in the Gulf nation.

The UAE has invested heavily to establish itself as a global AI hub. The country has hosted emerging AI startups and rapidly expanded its AI infrastructure, with many new data centers being constructed, particularly through the Stargate UAE project, which leveraged the nation’s close ties with the United States to gain access to advanced technologies, including cutting-edge semiconductor hardware.

“The biggest share of (the investment), by far, both looking back and looking forward, is the expansion of AI data centres across the UAE,” said Brad Smith, Microsoft’s Vice Chair and President, in an interview at the ADIPEC energy conference in Abu Dhabi. “From our perspective, it’s an investment that is critical to meet the demand here for the use of AI,” he added.

Last year, Microsoft invested $1.5 billion to acquire a minority stake in Abu Dhabi-based G42, securing a seat on its board. When asked whether G42 would eventually gain direct access to the most advanced U.S. chips, Smith responded that he expected it to be “part of G42’s future.”

In a blog post published on Monday, Smith noted that export licenses approved by the Biden administration last year allowed Microsoft to amass the equivalent of 21,500 Nvidia A100 GPUs in the UAE, comprising a mix of A100, H100, and H200 chips.

He added that in September, the White House approved an additional export package equivalent to 60,400 A100 chips, featuring Nvidia’s next-generation GB300 GPUs, raising the total by almost 300%.

The new approved chips have not yet been shipped to the UAE, but are expected to arrive “within months,” according to Smith.

By the end of this year, Microsoft will have invested $7.3 billion in the UAE since 2023. The company plans to invest an additional $7.9 billion in AI and cloud infrastructure expansion through 2029.

Microsoft’s $15.2 billion investment is not connected to Stargate UAE, which was unveiled last May as one of the largest data center complexes in the world, involving a consortium of global tech companies including OpenAI, Oracle, Nvidia, and others.