ABU DHABI: Deep in the Abu Dhabi desert, a vast AI campus a quarter the size of Paris is starting to emerge, the oil-rich UAE’s boldest bet yet on technology it hopes will help transform its economy.

Towering cranes clank as long, low buildings take shape below, the eventual home of data centres powered by five gigawatts of electricity — the biggest such facility outside the United States.

The campus will provide storage and computing capacity over a 3,200-kilometre (1990-mile) radius covering up to four billion people, said Johan Nilerud, chief strategy officer of Khazna Data Centres, a subsidiary of Emirati AI giant G42, which is spearheading the project.

Since the 1960s, oil has fuelled the United Arab Emirates’ rise from a desert outpost of nomadic tribes to a Middle East economic and diplomatic powerhouse.

Now, the UAE is hoping that AI can help fill the gap when oil demand inevitably wanes.

“The UAE is punching above its weight because it’s a very small country that really wants to be at the forefront,” said Nilerud.

“The idea is obviously to bring in international partners… to be this AI-native nation,” he added.

Phase one of the AI campus — the G42-built, one-gigawatt Stargate UAE cluster — will be operated by OpenAI and is backed by other US tech giants such as Oracle, Cisco, and Nvidia.

And last month, Microsoft announced more than $15.2 billion in investments in the UAE by 2029, after injecting $1.5 billion last year into G42.

Core subject

The UAE has been betting heavily on AI since 2017, when it named the world’s first AI minister and became the second country after Canada to unveil a national AI strategy.

A year later, G42 was founded with backing from Abu Dhabi-based sovereign wealth fund Mubadala. Chaired by the UAE president’s brother, Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, it offers a range of AI products and employs more than 23,000 people.

The UAE said it has pumped more than $147 billion into AI since 2024, including up to 50 billion euros ($58 billion) in a one-gigawatt AI data centre in France.

“AI, like oil, is a transversal sector, which can potentially have a leverage effect and an impact on different activities,” said Professor Jean-Francois Gagne of the University of Montreal.

In 2019, Abu Dhabi opened Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI), the world’s first AI-dedicated university. Last August, AI became a core subject in the country’s public schools from kindergarten up.

MBZUAI and Abu Dhabi’s Technology Innovation Institute (TII) have since launched generative AI models, including Falcon, which compared favourably with industry leaders and now has an Arabic version.

Keen to cut reliance on imported hardware and expertise, the UAE has made large investments in research, development, and homegrown programmes.

TII opened a research lab with Nvidia to “push the boundaries” of generative AI models and develop robotics systems, said executive director Najwa Aaraj.

“Sovereignty and self-sustainability and domestic customisation of technology to local needs are all very, very important,” Eric Xing, president of MBZUAI, told AFP.

“And also difficult to achieve if you solely rely on importing and external… technical transfer.”

Chips ahoy

In the race for AI market share, the UAE is in the chasing pack behind the US and China, the clear leaders. But the small, desert country has its advantages, chiefly money and energy.

With oil, gas and year-round sun for solar power, it can quickly build electricity stations to feed data centres — a major obstacle elsewhere.

And as the region’s business hub, with a population that is nearly 90% expatriate, the UAE has the edge compared to other nations in the region.

All the while, the UAE has engaged in a balancing act between the US and China as it seeks imports vital for AI, including the specialist chips that make data centres work.

Last month, intense lobbying bore fruit when the US approved the export of advanced Nvidia chips to both the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

“They (UAE) clearly don’t want to be dependent on China, but that doesn’t mean they want to depend on the US either,” said Gagne.

But despite its progress and years of heavy investment, success in this complex, ever-changing sector is far from guaranteed.

“Right now, we don’t know what the right strategy is, or who the good players are,” Gagne said.

“Everyone is betting on different players, but some will lose, and some will win.”

• Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado named winner in October.
• Machado dedicated honour in part to US President Donald Trump.
• Maduro says Trump aims to oust him to seize Venezuela’s oil.
  

Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado will not receive the Nobel Peace Prize in person at Wednesday’s award ceremony in Oslo, the director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute said on Wednesday, with her current whereabouts unknown.

Machado, 58, was due to receive the award at a ceremony at Oslo City Hall in the presence of King Harald, Queen Sonja and Latin American leaders, including Argentine President Javier Milei and Ecuadorean President Daniel Noboa.

The ceremony starts at 1 pm (1200 GMT).

Machado was due to receive the award in defiance of a decade-long travel ban imposed by authorities in her home country and after spending more than a year in hiding.

“She is unfortunately not in Norway and will not stand on stage at Oslo City Hall at 1 pm when the ceremony starts,” Kristian Berg Harpviken, the director of the institute and the permanent secretary of the award body, told broadcaster NRK.

Asked where she was, Harpviken said: “I don’t know.”

Dedicated to Trump

The ceremony will still go ahead. When a laureate is unable to attend, a close family member usually steps in to receive the prize and deliver the Nobel lecture in place of the laureate.

In this case, it will be Machado’s daughter, Ana Corina Sosa Machado, Harpviken said.

When she won the prize in October, Machado dedicated it in part to US President Donald Trump, who has said he himself deserved the honour.

President Nicolas Maduro, in power since 2013, says Trump is trying to overthrow him to gain access to Venezuela’s vast oil reserves and that Venezuelan citizens and armed forces will resist any such attempt.

The Nobel Institute did not immediately reply to a request for further comment.

US military strikes

Machado has aligned herself with hawks close to Trump who argue that Maduro has links to criminal gangs that pose a direct threat to US national security, despite doubts raised by the US intelligence community.

The Trump administration has ordered more than 20 military strikes in recent months against alleged drug-trafficking vessels in the Caribbean and off Latin America’s Pacific coast.

Human rights groups, some Democrats and several Latin American countries have condemned the attacks as unlawful extrajudicial killings of civilians.

Venezuela’s armed forces are planning to mount a guerrilla-style resistance or sow chaos in the event of a US air or ground attack, according to sources with knowledge of the efforts and planning documents seen by Reuters.

In 2024, Machado was barred from running in the presidential election despite having won the opposition’s primary by a landslide. She went into hiding in August 2024 after authorities expanded arrests of opposition figures following the disputed vote.

The electoral authority and top court declared Maduro the winner, but international observers and the opposition say their candidate handily won, and the opposition has published ballot box-level tallies as evidence of its victory.

Christopher Sabatini, a senior fellow for Latin America at Chatham House, said the Nobel prize had given “a strong signal of international validation … (of) the democratic results that had been forgotten”.

He told Reuters it had also elevated Machado to “a person that … the international community and the world can hang their hopes on,” he said.

“Oftentimes, democratic movements need a face. They need a story.”

NEW DELHI: India’s festival of lights, Diwali, was on Wednesday announced as an addition to United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation’s (Unesco) intangible cultural heritage list, sparking celebrations.

The UN cultural agency, meeting in the Indian capital New Delhi from Tuesday to Thursday, is examining dozens of nominations from as many as 78 countries.

The new announcements will join Uesco’s list of cultural heritage, whose purpose is to “raise awareness of the diversity of these traditions” and protect them in future.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi welcomed the announcement, saying the festival was “very closely linked to our culture and ethos”.

“It is the soul of our civilisation. It personifies illumination and righteousness,” he said in a statement on social media, adding the move “will contribute to the festival’s global popularity even further”.

The Delhi government is organising several events, including special illumination of buildings and decoration across major roads, along with a massive lamp-lighting ceremony.

As one of Hinduism’s most significant festivals, millions of Indians celebrate Diwali, also known as Deepavali, not just in India but globally.

Many people, including those from the Sikh and Jain religious communities, observe it as a five-day festival which symbolises the triumph of good over evil.

Celebrations, which happen on the new moon day in either late October or November, usually see lighting of lamps and bursting of firecrackers.

In much of north India, Diwali marks the return of Hindu Lord Rama to Ayodhya after defeating the demon king Ravana.

The festival is also strongly associated with worship of Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth and prosperity.

India’s foreign ministry said Diwali’s addition to the UNESCO list was a “joyous moment” for the country.