In mid-April this year, Microsoft announced it would invest $1.5 billion in G42, a leading artificial intelligence (AI) firm in the UAE.
The deal is just one small part of the UAE’s mission to become a world leader in AI. As the world has seen in the past few years, the country has been pulling all stops to use the technology to help remold its economy away from oil.
The country was an early mover in the fledgling industry. In fact, it appointed the world’s first AI minister in 2017. Omar bin Sultan al-Olama was just 27 when he took on the role, accepting the task of turning the UAE into an AI powerhouse by 2031.
In his Abu Dhabi address last September 2023, Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, said the UAE “has been talking about AI since before it was cool.”
Global ambitions
Besides Altman, some of Silicon Valley’s tech moguls betting on AI have also recently visited the UAE. These include Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and xAI’s Elon Musk.
“I am hopeful that the region can play a central role in this global conversation,” Altman told attendees during his September visit. Acknowledging the efforts of the government to promote the technology, he said the country could serve as the world’s “regulatory sandbox” to test innovative AI technologies.
A few months after his visit, OpenAI announced a partnership with G42.
Since its foundation in 2018, G42 has partnered with major tech firms, many of which are related to AI. In addition to OpenAI and Microsoft, G42 has teamed up with IBM, Nvidia, Oracle, Dell, and Cerebras. The $100 million deal with Cerebras, signed in 2023, seeks to build what the companies claim will be “the world’s largest supercomputer for AI training.”
AI ecosystem
Another crucial component in the UAE’s AI ambitions is the creation of the AI investment firm MGX. The firm came into existence in March 2024. It was created by the Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Technology Council (AIATC), which was established just a couple of months prior — in January 2024, to be more precise.
MGX’s mandate is to enable the advancement and deployment of cutting-edge technologies that will improve the lives of current and future generations. Unsurprisingly, one of the key areas MGX will focus on is the development and adoption of AI. Mubadala, one of the UAE’s largest sovereign funds, and G42 have been appointed as MGX’s foundational partners.
“Our singular focus [with MGX] is accelerating AI’s responsible and inclusive development for the benefit of humanity, guided by Abu Dhabi’s global investment strategy for AI,” Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan, deputy ruler of Abu Dhabi and chair of the AIATC, said in a statement.
Bursting into the scene
As it signed multi-billion dollar deals, the UAE has also created ripples in the AI world on the software front.
In May 2020, it created the Advanced Technology Research Council (ATRC), a government entity tasked with advanced research and development in all aspects of technology, including AI. In September 2023, the ATRC’s Technology Innovation Institute (TII) released the Falcon large language model (LLM), named after the UAE’s national bird.
Simply put, LLMs are machine learning models that can comprehend and generate human language text. They form the backbone of AI tools like ChatGPT. Falcon was released under an open-source license.
By some accounts, the Falcon LLM was the best open-source LLM available in the world upon its release. It even outperformed offerings from Meta and Google. Its release announced the arrival of the UAE in the AI scene.
To further demonstrate its intent, ATRC earmarked $300 million in February 2024 to create the Falcon Foundation. The nonprofit body will oversee the development of open-source generative AI models based on Falcon.
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Attracting talent
One goal of open-sourcing Falcon was to make it available to researchers worldwide, which could help the country attract top talent.
According to estimates, there has been a massive influx of tech workers in the UAE since 2021. As of September 2023, some 120,000 people were working on AI in the UAE. This is a far cry from the 30,000 two years prior. TII itself has a staff of around 800 from 74 countries.
And things are only going to get better. According to Microsoft, one objective of its partnership with G42 is to nurture a “skilled and diverse AI workforce and talent pool.” To that end, the companies are pooling $1 billion in a development fund for developers.
“With AI, we cannot afford to be reactive. We must be proactive,” al-Olama said in a recent interview. “That’s the goal of [the] government: to be proactive and do something about it today.”
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