The United States and United Arab Emirates will partner to build a massive data center complex in Abu Dhabi to advance artificial intelligence capabilities with 5-gigawatts of capacity — enough to power a major city.
The agreement, announced Thursday during US President Donald Trump’s visit to the UAE, will mark the largest data center deployment outside of the United States, according to the Commerce Department. It will begin with a 1-gigawatt AI data center, but will eventually span 10 square miles.
The project is also expected to expand the footprint of American AI and cloud companies in the Middle East, allowing them to better serve the global south.
No companies were named in the Commerce Department’s announcement, although Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was spotted at one of Trump’s UAE meetings. Nvidia declined to comment.
Trump has been working to push AI investment, as the success of US tech companies are seen as key to retaining the US’s position as a global superpower.