By Javier Surasky
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In the
global map of artificial intelligence, we have already identified actors that
are powerful because they control resources that are difficult to replace
(Nvidia, TSMC, AWS, and Microsoft Azure, among others); national and
international actors with varying degrees of capacity to impose decisions and
regulations (the United States, China, India, the United Nations, among them);
actors focused on safety (METR, Redwood Research), shared knowledge (Hugging
Face), human talent development (MIT, Tsinghua University), and resource
coordination (CoreWeave).
This time,
we turn to an actor that shares similarities and differences with several of
them: G42, a technology group born in Abu Dhabi and closely linked to the
strategy of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to become a relevant actor in the
global artificial intelligence economy (G42, n.d.-a), articulating resources
controlled by other actors and turning those connections into infrastructure,
technological access, and international reach.
Much more than an AI company
Describing
G42 as an artificial intelligence company is insufficient.
Its
structure extends from data centers and cloud services to cybersecurity,
healthcare, geospatial intelligence, data analytics, and model development. The
group itself presents its strategy through the idea of an Intelligence Grid:
an infrastructure connecting compute, data, and AI systems.
This might
lead us to think that we are looking at an actor similar to CoreWeave, but that
is not the case. Although G42 shares with CoreWeave the capacity to organize technological resources it does not control, it is part of an ecosystem of
Emirati companies in which it provides cloud services and computing
infrastructure, alongside Khazna, which develops data centers; Presight, which
carries out large-scale data analytics; M42, which integrates healthcare,
biotechnology, and digital capabilities; and Space42, which focuses on space
technologies, communications, and geospatial intelligence (G42, n.d.-b; G42,
n.d.-c; Presight, n.d.; Space42, 2024).
G42 is part
of the UAE strategy to turn its financial resources, energy availability, and
investment capacity into a relevant international position within the global AI
power map. In fact, Microsoft refers to it as a national AI champion
(Smith, 2026), capable of concentrating resources, building national
capabilities, attracting international partners, and becoming a privileged
interlocutor between the state and major technology providers.
For several
years, G42 maintained significant technological ties with Chinese companies. Those
connections became a geopolitical problem in 2024, when Republican lawmakers
called for a security assessment of the agreement between Microsoft and G42
because of the Emirati company’s historical links with Chinese firms, including
Huawei (Reuters, 2024).
The result
was a shift in the company’s position, as it chose to preserve its partnership
with Microsoft. In April 2024, Microsoft announced a $1.5 billion investment in
G42, giving it a minority stake and a seat on its board.
The
agreement between the two companies included security commitments and an Intergovernmental
Assurance Agreement developed in consultation with the governments of the
United States and the United Arab Emirates (Microsoft, 2024a), meaning that a
relationship between two private companies became part of an architecture of
guarantees between states.
G42 thus
became a clear example of how competition between the United States and China is reshaping the conditions under which companies can establish alliances: to
gain access to the U.S. technological ecosystem, G42 had to become a
politically trusted partner.
Along the
same lines, in November 2025, the U.S. Department of Commerce authorized
exports of advanced semiconductors to G42 subject to security conditions and
reporting requirements. The decision was presented as part of the U.S. strategy
to expand the American AI technology stack among allies and partners
(U.S. Department of Commerce, 2025).
Stargate UAE Project
Stargate
UAE was announced in May 2025 as the first international deployment of
Stargate, as part of the OpenAI for Countries initiative, through an
agreement involving G42, OpenAI, Oracle, Nvidia, Cisco, and SoftBank and
developed in coordination with the U.S. government (OpenAI, 2025).
The
distribution of roles is highly revealing: G42 participates in building the
infrastructure; OpenAI and Oracle are involved in operating the cluster; Nvidia
supplies computing systems; Cisco contributes to the network infrastructure;
and SoftBank is part of the alliance (OpenAI, 2025; G42, 2025b). This means
that G42 does not individually control any of the elements that make the whole
possible, yet it acts as the axis around which they are organized.
This is
where its power becomes visible: G42 provides territory, investment, local
infrastructure, ties to the state, and the capacity to bring all these
components together within a single project. In other words, its position
depends on other actors that, in turn, find in G42 a vehicle for gaining access
to resources and markets through interactions that would be difficult to
organize separately. G42’s power lies in positioning itself at the intersection
of dependencies in order to help overcome them.
At the same
time, projects promoted by the UAE and G42 explicitly seek to expand national
capacity to store data, access compute, and deploy artificial intelligence
systems under domestic jurisdiction. Added to this are infrastructure projects
and sovereign cloud services for the Emirati market and public sector resulting
from its partnership with Microsoft (G42, 2025a; Microsoft, 2024a). A state
with its own data centers, computing infrastructure, and systems has greater
room to exercise digital sovereignty.
But the G42
case also shows the limits of that claim.
Infrastructure
may be physically located within national territory while chips, cloud
services, frontier systems, and access to certain components remain dependent
on external providers and political authorizations. This allows us to speak of sovereignty
through managed interdependence: faced with the impossibility of
eliminating dependencies, the aim is to organize them in ways that expand one’s
own room for action.
This idea
is reinforced by G42’s attempt to position itself as a provider of AI
infrastructure and capabilities to other countries. Today it maintains projects
in India and Africa, among other markets where there is interest in developing
national infrastructure without having all the technological resources required
to do so.
That
strategy extends a broad chain of dependencies into partner countries:
infrastructure may be physically located in Africa or Asia, but key hardware,
software, and services continue to come from U.S. companies, with G42 acting as
intermediary.
A new type of technological power
G42
leverages the UAE’s enormous resources—capital, energy, the capacity to carry
out major infrastructure projects, and a foreign policy capable of establishing
partnerships with governments and global companies at the same time—and turns
them into opportunities for technological relationships, becoming a kind of geotechnological
intermediary.
This
position allows it to gain influence, although it faces clear limits arising
from external dependencies. At the same time, however, it also creates
cross-dependencies: major companies, for example, may change their alliance
policies in ways that work against investment in the UAE, but they also need
capital, electricity, land, data centers, access to new markets, and
politically capable partners able to develop large-scale projects.
In an
international AI system characterized by an extreme concentration of
capabilities, not every actor needs to control a bottleneck in order to
accumulate power. Some build their position by creating channels that make it
possible to move around these “digital chokepoints.” This is where G42
positions itself.
Basic data
- G42 was founded in 2018. Its current CEO is Peng Xiao, while Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan serves as Chairman of the Board.
- It has a workforce of approximately 23,000 people and a presence in more than 30 countries, offering digital and cloud infrastructure, AI security, sector-specific solutions, and investments (G42, n.d.-a; G42, 2023).
- Abu Dhabi’s Department of Government Enablement agreed with Microsoft and Core42 to implement a sovereign cloud environment designed to integrate large-scale government digital services in the UAE (G42, 2025a).
- In May 2026, G42 and the Government of India formalized the commercial framework for Condor Galaxy India, a supercomputing project designed to expand the country’s AI capabilities (G42, 2026).
- In Kenya, in partnership with Microsoft, the companies announced a $1 billion investment initiative in 2024 that includes the construction by G42 and its partners of a data center intended to operate a new Microsoft Azure region in East Africa, alongside projects involving local-language models, connectivity, training, and cloud services (Microsoft, 2024b).
References
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better everyday: G42's five-year anniversary celebrates a momentous journey of
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(2025a). Abu Dhabi Government accelerates digital strategy with landmark
Microsoft and G42 partnership. G42 — Abu Dhabi Government
partnership
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(2025b). Global tech alliance launches Stargate UAE. G42 — Stargate UAE
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(2025, May 22). Introducing Stargate UAE. OpenAI — Stargate UAE
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(2024, July 11). US Republican lawmakers concerned over Microsoft-G42 AI
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(2026, September 23). Microsoft strengthens its commitment to the Middle
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