As global supply chains face sustained disruption, the UAE is pressing ahead with a plan to build sovereign AI infrastructure, technology and data that the country can control without relinquishing intellectual property to foreign providers.
In this week's Business Extra, recorded at the Make it in the Emirates summit in Abu Dhabi, host Salim A Essaid speaks to the executives behind a deal finalised in March, in which UAE-based sovereign AI company Aleria won a major agreement with Nvidia to use advanced AI infrastructure in the UAE, beginning with thousands of Blackwell Ultra chips.
Eric Leandri, chief executive of Aleria, Marc Domenech, vice president of Enterprise at Nvidia for the Middle East, North Africa and South Europe, and Paul Bloch, co-founder of data intelligence platform DDN, explain why sovereign AI is critical for the most sensitive areas of a country's digital operations, from health care and financial systems to government data and defence, and why investment in the sector is increasing in defiance of the geopolitical climate.
