UAE’s Stargate AI data center will cost over $30 billion as Abu Dhabi scales sovereign AI infrastructure to support advanced models and global partners.
The cost of the UAE’s flagship Stargate data center project will exceed $30 billion, significantly higher than earlier estimates, as the country accelerates efforts to position itself as a global hub for artificial intelligence.
Also Read: Khazna Launches First 200MW Data Centre in Saudi Arabia
Omar Al Olama, the UAE’s Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence, Digital Economy and Remote Work Applications, said the project’s scale and ambition reflected the country’s push to build sovereign AI infrastructure capable of supporting next-generation technologies. He was speaking at the Machines Can Think summit in Abu Dhabi.
Stargate is designed as a 5-gigawatt data center campus spanning 19.2 square kilometers in Abu Dhabi—making it more than nine times the size of Monaco. Once completed, it is expected to provide the massive computing capacity required to train and deploy advanced generative AI models at a national and international scale.
The revised cost estimate represents a roughly 50% increase from the $20 billion figure announced in early 2025. Al Olama said the first phase of the project is scheduled for completion by the third quarter of this year, with subsequent phases to be delivered over several years.
He described Stargate as a defining example of the UAE’s willingness to invest at an unprecedented scale in digital infrastructure. “This is the most famous piece of evidence of our ability to build things that no one else dares to dream of,” Al Olama said, pointing to the project’s size and long-term strategic intent.
Beyond scale, Al Olama emphasized the growing importance of data sovereignty and national control over AI infrastructure. He said the UAE aims to provide countries with alternatives to purely commercial AI platforms by offering access to large-scale, neutral computing capacity.
“We want to ensure that countries have an option that does not look for profit or specific commercial gains, but focuses on giving sovereign choices,” he said.
The minister also highlighted the UAE’s progress in developing its own large language models, including Jais and K2 Think, which he said have already generated economic value while allowing partner countries to benefit from the UAE’s technological advances.
Stargate is being developed by Khazna Data Centres, a subsidiary of Abu Dhabi-based AI group G42, with backing from global technology companies including OpenAI, Oracle, Nvidia, Cisco and SoftBank. South Korea has also joined the initiative, underscoring its growing international footprint.
The project comes as governments worldwide race to secure AI infrastructure amid surging demand for computing power, rising energy constraints, and concerns over control of strategic digital assets.
Why UAE’s Stargate $30B Matters to MENA
Stargate signals a decisive shift in how the Middle East competes in the global AI race—from adopting AI to owning the infrastructure that powers it. By investing at hyperscale, the UAE is positioning itself as a neutral, sovereign provider of compute for governments, enterprises, and AI developers that want alternatives to US- and China-dominated platforms.
For startups and scale-ups across MENA, projects like Stargate lower long-term barriers to building and deploying advanced AI locally, especially in regulated sectors such as finance, energy, healthcare, and government. Access to regional, sovereign-grade computing could reduce dependency on foreign cloud infrastructure while keeping sensitive data closer to home.
At a policy level, the project reinforces a broader Gulf strategy: pairing capital with energy and infrastructure advantages to anchor the AI value chain domestically. As neighboring markets like Saudi Arabia and Qatar
