AIQ, the Abu Dhabi-based artificial intelligence company focused on the energy sector, sees opportunities to export its technology to the US and Canada, its chief executive has said.
“We'd like to take that technology to the United States, to Canada, to wherever else they can use our technology,” chief executive Dennis Jol said in a virtual interview.
AIQ products have already been used in the UAE. The company last year announced a $340 million contract with Adnoc to use EnergyAI, the first agentic AI for the energy sector. Agentic AI refers to systems that act autonomously as opposed to those that respond only to prompts. Under a three-year contract, EnergyAI and other solutions will be introduced across Adnoc's upstream operations.
AIQ, a joint venture between Adnoc and AI company Presight, is chaired by Dr Sultan Al Jaber, Adnoc's managing director and group chief executive. He is also UAE Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology.
It currently has partnerships with Colombia, Indonesia and Kazakhstan, plus a portfolio of more than 14 AI products to boost the performance of energy operations.
AIQ was part of a broader delegation from the Gulf unable to attend CERAWeek by S&P Global in Houston last month because of the Iran war. More than 11,000 delegates attended the annual energy conference, which sets the industry agenda for the year.
“We've been able to take this UAE technology that we built here in the UAE, that we're really proud of, and get it out to the world to actually make the energy systems a better place,” he said.
Mr Jol said AIQ is also hoping to make an announcement “very soon” with a scale-up in a country that is to be announced. “We're in the negotiation process of the final … terms and conditions,” he said.
Key diversification pillar
AI is a key pillar of the UAE's economic diversification programme as the country seeks to become a global technology hub.
The 5-gigawatt Stargate UAE data centre – whose partners include G42, Oracle, OpenAI, Nvidia, Cisco and SoftBank – is expected to come online in 2026 and will cover 19.2 square kilometres. In November, the US authorised the export of advanced Nvidia chips to G42 in a major boost for the UAE's AI ambitions.
“The fact that we're sitting here in an ecosystem within a sovereign cloud, working with sovereign data, puts us in a unique spot to build models,” Mr Jol said.
He was also optimistic about how the UAE is positioning itself in the AI race, saying it has the three ingredients necessary to be competitive: compute, data and talent.
“When you look at what's happening with electricity pricing and data centres, I think that you'll see that the need for AI to make our energy systems far more optimum is … our biggest opportunity,” he said.
