Microsoft's recent AI investments and partnerships in the UAE have the potential to bolster economies throughout the Middle East, the company's president has said.
Brad Smith, who also serves as vice chairman of the Redmond, Washington-based technology giant, also said that various US endeavours with the UAE can help to bring technology to other parts of the world.
"I believe and hope it will be a beginning that, you know, will advance economic development and prosperity and societal good in the Middle East itself, in places like the UAE, and Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, and the like," he said on Wednesday during an interview with the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington.
Over the past decade, the UAE − the Arab world’s second largest economy − has sought be a leader in the AI sector as it diversifies its economy away from oil.
Microsoft has been helping to support the country's AI aspirations in recent years. The company made a $1.5 billion investment in UAE AI and cloud company G42 in 2024, and later announced that it would open its research-based AI for Good Lab in Abu Dhabi.
Mr Smith's comments about Microsoft's projects and programmes in the UAE come several weeks after he told Congress that the US should try to emulate the UAE's AI strategy.
He praised Abu Dhabi's Tamm government services AI assistant, which acts as a one-stop-shop for government services including transport, health care, housing and police services.
"We need to bring it to America," he told a US Senate commerce, science and transport committee hearing, referring to the need for apps that simplify the process of renewing driver licences, obtaining various forms and other services.
During his interview with CSIS, Mr Smith also spoke in greater detail about Microsoft's investment and partnership with UAE's G42.
He said the "financial and technological" relationship between the two companies had the potential to pay altruistic dividends around the world.
"How do you take AI, which requires electricity, and bring it to countries and to people that don’t even have electricity?" he said.
"One is a financial and technology partnership, like what we are advancing between the US and the UAE, Microsoft and G42, so that G42 can build out datacenter infrastructure in Africa."
During the interview, Mr Smith also addressed the increasingly controversial topic of export controls.
"The US has the opportunity to become the world’s leading exporter of not just digital technology services, but AI services in the future," he said.
Over the last year, Microsoft has been a vocal critic of US export control policies which seek to prevent US AI technology from potentially being used by countries it views as adversarial, like China.
Caught in the middle, however, were countries like the UAE, which were disproportionately affected by certain rules that would have limited their ability to obtain the chips required to fulfil their AI goals.
In February, Mr Smith said the export rules, created under former president Joe Biden, would cause ally countries to "worry that an insufficient supply of critical American AI technology will restrict their opportunities for economic growth".
A recent deal between the UAE and US, called the US-UAE AI Acceleration Partnership, largely alleviated many of those concerns, providing the UAE with a path to obtain the powerful chips.
President Donald Trump's administration said that security guarantees within the partnership aiming to prevent diversion of US technology into the wrong hands played a crucial role in making the deal possible.
While speaking at CSIS, Mr Smith also briefly touched upon the AI Acceleration Partnership, as well as Microsoft's investment with G42 which preceded it.
"Let’s do a better job of packaging ourselves," he said, talking about the importance of boasting the benefits of partnerships between companies and countries.
"That's in effect what Microsoft and G42 in the US and UAE have started to do, let’s continue to move in that direction."
