A plan to build a campus and data centre for artificial intelligence in the UAE marks one of the world's largest computing infrastructure projects.
Abu Dhabi AI company G42 has teamed up with technology giants OpenAI, Oracle and Nvidia, alongside SoftBank Group, to create Stargate UAE.
It will be the largest AI data centre, forming part of a system of OpenAI-linked data centres around the world and marking a further vote of confidence in the UAE's capabilities to host large-scale tech critical to today's economic, societal and business needs.
OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman said in a post on X: "Great to work with the UAE on our first international Stargate! Appreciate the governments working together to make this happen. Sheikh Tahnoon has been a great supporter of OpenAI, a true believer in AGI, and a dear personal friend."
Here, we try to quantify what the big numbers mean and how Stargate UAE compares to its peers.
What is data centre capacity?
Data centre capacity is the total physical space and power needed to handle the storage and processing of data, typically measured in kilowatts or megawatts.
Data centres are grouped into three sizes: small, measuring up to about 1,000 square feet (93 square metres), medium, around 10,000 sqft to 50,000 sqft, and large, which are more than 50,000 sqft, according to Data Centre World.
At the launch of Stargate UAE were President Sheikh Mohamed; Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi; Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed, Crown Prince of Dubai, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defence; Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed, Deputy Ruler of Abu Dhabi and National Security Adviser; Khaldoon Al Mubarak, chairman of the UAE’s Executive Affairs Authority; Peng Xiao, G42 chief executive; Jensen Huang, chief executive of Nvidia; Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI; SoftBank Group founder Masayoshi Son; Jeetu Patel, Cisco's president and chief product officer; Mike Sicilia, Oracle executive vice president; and Marty Edelman, group general counsel of G42. Photo: G42
In general, the bigger the data centre, the bigger its capacity. On a monthly basis, they are estimated to consume as much as 36,000kWh, 2,000MW and 10MW, respectively, it added.
The capacity of data centres is not exclusive to the power needed to handle data – it also includes other resources needed to run the facility, including cooling systems, its size, the types of servers used and, most importantly, how many graphics processing units, or GPUs, are in it. Increasingly, more sustainable and eco-friendly systems are being used by the industry to make them more efficient.
What can 1MW and 1GW do?
A single MW can support 1,000 Nvidia Blackwell GPUs for training or, in inference mode, tens of millions of daily ChatGPT‑style queries.
"Think of 1MW as the backbone for a mid‑sized national‑language model serving an entire country," Mohammed Soliman, director of the strategic technologies and cybersecurity programme at the Washington-based Middle East Institute think tank, told The National.
Meanwhile, 1GW of continuous power is enough to run roughly one million top‑end Nvidia GPUs once cooling and power‑conversion overheads are factored in.
In other words, that is roughly the annual electricity used by a city the size of San Francisco or Washington.
How much do data centres cost to build?
Depending on the size, anywhere from millions to billions of dollars.
The components needed to be taken into consideration are land and construction costs; equipment, most importantly how many servers will be hosted; infrastructure, including cooling systems and power (should be lower if green energy options are used); security measures, both physically and digitally; and manpower.
Also, data centre builders need to consider potential increases in operating costs as time goes on and the location where the data centre will be built. The most expensive markets for data centre construction are Tokyo, Singapore and Zurich, according to a study by UK professional services firm Turner & Townsend.
China Telecom Data Centre, the world's biggest before the unveiling of Stargate UAE, has a capacity of "only" 150MW and was built at a cost of $3 billion. Investments into 1GW Stargate UAE – built in co-operation with Cisco and Japan's SoftBank Group and part of a planned larger 5GW campus – will reportedly be in the $20 billion range, according to OpenAI.
How does Stargate UAE stack against other big data centres?
It actually blows everyone else out of the water – as shown by the aforementioned size of China Telecom Data Centre.
Stargate UAE even outsizes the data centres of Google and Microsoft, both in terms of size and cost: they have a capacity of 100MW and 50MW, respectively, and cost a reported $5.5 billion and $3 billion, according to data compiled by California-based technology services firm Brightlio.
Even Apple's data centre in Arizona only has a capacity of 50MW and cost $2 billion.
Once the 5GW campus is complete, it could host about 2.5 million GPUs while gulping as much power as several mid‑sized US cities combined, Mr Soliman added.
The UAE has at least 17 data centres, according to data compiled by industry tracker DataCentres.com, and has plans to boost this figure.
Abu Dhabi's Khazna Data Centres, one of the industry's largest operators in the Middle East, has a capacity of nearly 450MW and has plans to build a 100MW campus in Ajman, which would be its largest in the UAE. Its chief executive, Hassan Al Naqbi, had told The National that it expects UAE data centre capacity will leap to 850MW by 2029.
Last month, a hyperscaler data centre worth Dh2 billion ($545 million) to be built in Dubai was announced by telecom provider du and Microsoft. Even Awqaf Abu Dhabi, or the Endowment and Minors’ Fund Authority, is also open to investing in data centres as part of its push into defensive sectors to help shield its assets from economic shocks, its director general recently told The National.
That's aside from enormous investments poured in by Microsoft, Oracle, Google, Alibaba and other big-name players into the UAE's data centre market.
"The UAE lies at the crossroads of three high‑growth regions: South Asia, East Africa and the Middle East. It sits comfortably within the latency envelope that hyperscalers target," Mr Soliman said.
In addition, the Stargate UAE campus "should provide the steady demand that makes new clean‑energy projects bankable", he added.
RESULT
Huddersfield Town 2 Manchester United 1
Huddersfield: Mooy (28'), Depoitre (33')
Manchester United: Rashford (78')
Man of the Match: Aaron Mooy (Huddersfield Town)
The National Archives, Abu Dhabi
Founded over 50 years ago, the National Archives collects valuable historical material relating to the UAE, and is the oldest and richest archive relating to the Arabian Gulf.
Much of the material can be viewed on line at the Arabian Gulf Digital Archive - https://www.agda.ae/en
Dubai is on a mission to record good air quality for 90 per cent of the year – up from 86 per cent annually today – by 2021.
The municipality plans to have seven mobile air-monitoring stations by 2020 to capture more accurate data in hourly and daily trends of pollution.
These will be on the Palm Jumeirah, Al Qusais, Muhaisnah, Rashidiyah, Al Wasl, Al Quoz and Dubai Investment Park.
“It will allow real-time responding for emergency cases,” said Khaldoon Al Daraji, first environment safety officer at the municipality.
“We’re in a good position except for the cases that are out of our hands, such as sandstorms.
“Sandstorms are our main concern because the UAE is just a receiver.
“The hotspots are Iran, Saudi Arabia and southern Iraq, but we’re working hard with the region to reduce the cycle of sandstorm generation.”
Mr Al Daraji said monitoring as it stood covered 47 per cent of Dubai.
There are 12 fixed stations in the emirate, but Dubai also receives information from monitors belonging to other entities.
“There are 25 stations in total,” Mr Al Daraji said.
“We added new technology and equipment used for the first time for the detection of heavy metals.
“A hundred parameters can be detected but we want to expand it to make sure that the data captured can allow a baseline study in some areas to ensure they are well positioned.”
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Countdown to Zero exhibition will show how disease can be beaten
Countdown to Zero: Defeating Disease, an international multimedia exhibition created by the American Museum of National History in collaboration with The Carter Center, will open in Abu Dhabi a month before Reaching the Last Mile.
Opening on October 15 and running until November 15, the free exhibition opens at The Galleria mall on Al Maryah Island, and has already been seen at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum in Atlanta, the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
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Houthis: Iran-backed rebels who occupy Sanaa and run unrecognised government
Yemeni government: Exiled government in Aden led by eight-member Presidential Leadership Council
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Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
