ABU DHABI: US tech giant Microsoft on Monday announced USD15.2 billion in investments in artificial intelligence and cloud computing in the United Arab Emirates.
Microsoft’s vice chairman and president Brad Smith said Microsoft had invested USD7.3 billion in the Gulf country since 2023 and would spend USD7.9 billion more by the end of 2029.
The deal sent US chip-maker Nvidia shares up 2.6 percent, buoyed by hopes the AI juggernaut could see access for its most advanced chips expand to more markets. “This is not money raised in the UAE. It’s money we’re spending in the UAE,” Smith wrote in a blog post published during a visit to Abu Dhabi.
Smith said the investments had been encouraged by both the US and UAE governments and had involved a partnership with the country’s G42 sovereign artificial intelligence company.
Roughly two-thirds of the money spent will go on building AI and cloud data centres in the UAE, and a third of it on planned local operating expenses.
In the blog post, Smith boasted that Microsoft was the first company to receive export licences from President Donald Trump’s administration to supply GPU chips to the UAE.
