OpenAI unveiled plans on Thursday to build a massive computing complex in the United Arab Emirates, following a deal between the Trump administration and the Persian Gulf nation.
The company’s new facility is part of a joint venture with the software giant Oracle, the chipmaker Nvidia, the Japanese conglomerate SoftBank and G42, an Emirati artificial intelligence firm. The first of several data centers planned for the complex is expected to be up and running next year.
G42 is also expected to contribute money to the construction of OpenAI data centers in the United States. For every dollar that the firm and its partners invest in the Emirates, they will invest an equivalent amount in the U.S. data centers, OpenAI said. While OpenAI did not say how much the new Emirati facility would cost, its size suggests G42 will invest tens of billions of dollars in each country.
Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, has spent more than a year evangelizing for the global construction of huge data centers to help his company build powerful A.I. systems. And the Emirati announcement is an indication that his wildly ambitious plan, called Stargate, may be starting to gain traction.
The complex arrangement overlaps with a separate agreement reached last week between the United States and the United Arab Emirates to build an A.I. campus in Abu Dhabi powered by five gigawatts of electrical power — enough to power all the homes in Minnesota. The campus would be the largest project of its kind outside the United States.
The Middle East data center plans have divided Washington. The Trump administration officials who drove the deal, including David Sacks, the White House’s A.I. czar, have championed it as a way persuade the Gulf States to use and promote American A.I. technology rather than turning to China. But others in the administration and across Capitol Hill have expressed concern that the deal poses a threat to national security and risks turning the Middle East into an A.I. rival of the United States.
“The administration decided to partner with one of the most sensitive regions in the world and picked this battle,” said Pablo Chavez, an adjunct senior fellow who has written about A.I. infrastructure with the Center for a New American Security, a think tank. “The question is: Is this the blueprint and model for what the U.S. does in Asia, in Africa and Europe?”
The Commerce Department and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
In January, OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle joined President Trump in announcing that they would create at least $100 billion in computing infrastructure in the United States. Construction is underway on data centers in Abilene, Texas. Now, G42 is expected to contribute money to this effort. Total investments in the U.S. part of the Stargate project could reach $500 billion, OpenAI has said.
OpenAI said on Thursday that it would build a one-gigawatt campus in the Emirates, with 200 megawatts — one-fifth of the total — expected to go live next year. A one-gigawatt data center would cost $20 billion, according to figures OpenAI shared with the Biden administration last year. Other companies will build facilities totaling four gigawatts under the plan approved by the Trump administration for the Emirates. But it is unclear who these companies will be.
The Trump administration, OpenAI and Nvidia, the world’s dominant maker of chips for artificial intelligence, have championed building data centers in the Middle East sooner rather than later because U.S. technology companies now have an edge over their Chinese rivals. They warn that the Chinese giant Huawei, which is developing competitive artificial intelligence chips, is on the cusp of making enough chips to begin filling data centers outside China.
“These are America First deals that drive investment into the U.S., improve our trade balance, and lock in American technology as the global standard,” Mr. Sacks said in a social media post this week.
Others in government and the tech industry are skeptical of those claims. They argue that Huawei is years behind Nvidia in manufacturing powerful chips at scale, partly because U.S. export controls have hobbled Chinese chipmakers. They also worry that the Trump administration didn’t get Emirati security guarantees for limiting Chinese access to the chips, and they say the deals favor the Gulf States rather than the United States.
“What happened to ‘America First’?” Representative Ro Khanna, Democrat of California, said during an appearance on ABC on Sunday. “Why don’t we put that center in Pennsylvania or in Ohio?”
Mr. Altman called those critics “naive” in a social media post.
To build A.I. technologies like ChatGPT, companies like OpenAI, Google and Microsoft need data centers packed with thousands of computer chips and powered by enough electricity to run millions of ordinary American homes.
OpenAI plans to eventually build five to 10 data center campuses in the United States, each requiring around 1.2 gigawatts of power. But it is unclear whether it will fulfill these plans; it has started construction on only the campus in Abilene. As these companies work to build data centers, they are exploring deals wherever they can find the money and the electrical power, including Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
(The New York Times has sued OpenAI and its partner, Microsoft, claiming copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems. The two companies have denied the suit’s claims.)
As part of its partnership with OpenAI, the Emirates will become the first country to deploy ChatGPT nationwide, OpenAI said. Every citizen and resident will soon have free access to ChatGPT Plus, a service normally priced at $20 a month, the company said.
Cade Metz is a Times reporter who writes about artificial intelligence, driverless cars, robotics, virtual reality and other emerging areas of technology.
Tripp Mickle reports on Apple and Silicon Valley for The Times and is based in San Francisco. His focus on Apple includes product launches, manufacturing issues and political challenges. He also writes about trends across the tech industry, including layoffs, generative A.I. and robot taxis.
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