Why are Saudi Arabia and the UAE building so much AI, and how sovereign is it?

Two Gulf states have made some of the world's boldest AI bets. Saudi Arabia launched Humain in May 2025, owned by its Public Investment Fund and chaired by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The UAE has G42, its leading AI company, and a planned 5-gigawatt campus in Abu Dhabi. Inside it sits Stargate UAE, a 1-gigawatt cluster announced in May 2025, to be built by G42 and operated by OpenAI and Oracle, with Nvidia, SoftBank Group and Cisco also involved.

Their logic differs from Canada's or Europe's. Those regions want to depend less on outsiders for their own needs. The Gulf also wants to sell AI capacity to the world, the way it sells energy. The US-Saudi agreement speaks of using land, energy and location to serve local, regional and global demand.

What is being built

Humain also lists a large Arabic language model as a priority, has put US$3 billion into xAI and plans a venture fund. Its CEO, Tareq Amin, told Semafor that global hyperscalers' long-term purchase agreements, known as offtakes, make it easier to raise debt for the buildout, because lenders can count on them. In other words, foreign demand helps finance a project described as national. Humain has also begun preparing for a possible stock listing, reports Arab News, with no timetable or size announced.

As with Canada's plans, these are mostly statements of intent. Announced gigawatts should be read as ambitions until a site is shown running.

The real gatekeeper: Washington

Neither country makes its own top-end AI chips, so American export rules decide how fast they can grow. Two decisions matter most.

November 2025. During the Crown Prince's visit to Washington, the Commerce Department authorized G42 and Humain each to buy the equivalent of up to 35,000 Nvidia GB300 chips, conditional on security and reporting requirements.

July 2026. A new rule took effect on July 10, moving the UAE into a favoured export group, Country Group A:5. But law firm Morgan Lewis explains the catch. License-free access to advanced chips goes only to entities on an approved list, and the authorization for G42 and Core42 expires automatically after 270 days unless the Bureau of Industry and Security extends it. Saudi Arabia is not part of this rule.

These approvals had a price. An Asia Society analysis says G42, Humain and their hosts cut Chinese ties, including with Huawei, in exchange for chip access. Amin says Humain will not let Chinese frontier labs train on its capacity, though it will offer Chinese open-source models for inference, which means running models that are already trained. "This is all acceptable under the framework with the US," he told Semafor.

American critics remain unconvinced. The Capitol Forum described G42 as having an alleged history of technology transfers to China, in reporting on the July rule. And in Canada, Maroussia Lévesque, reacting to AI for All, warned that partnerships with Middle East countries with poor rights records call for caution.

So how sovereign is this? In money and in land, very. In chips, very little. It is a good illustration of the difference between owning a site and controlling it, and of a dependence that a foreign government can adjust or switch off.

When data centres became targets

In March 2026, during the U.S. and Israeli war with Iran, drones struck two Amazon data centres in the UAE, and a nearby strike damaged one in Bahrain. Iran's Revolutionary Guards claimed responsibility and said the Bahrain site was chosen because Amazon supports the U.S. military. In September, AWS told customers it could not restore access to some of those resources.

The consequences go beyond one company:

• Design. CNBC, citing Reuters, says the UAE is considering spreading out the Stargate site, with some facilities underground and protected by blast-resistant concrete and interceptors. These are reports, not announced plans.
• Security at Humain. Amin says its sites are distributed and being "very well hardened".
• A sovereignty paradox. Asia Society's analysis observes that the standard advice after a strike is to move your data to another region. Gulf laws requiring sensitive public data to stay at home collide with that advice, so keeping data in one place can concentrate risk rather than reduce it.

Canadians have a stake in the region's choices too. An arm of Saudi Aramco is an investor in Cohere's Series E, according to The Hub, so the same capital touches the Canadian sovereign AI story.

What does the Gulf's experience teach an organization choosing where its AI runs?

Three lessons travel well, even if you never work near a conflict zone.

First, separate where something is from who can stop it. A site may sit in your country and still depend on a foreign licence, as G42's 270-day clock shows. For your own supplier, ask what approvals or contracts could interrupt service.

Second, test your backup plan against your own rules. If a law or client contract requires data to stay in one place, a failure in that place has no easy fix. Plan for it: a second site within the same jurisdiction, or copies you hold yourself.

Third, read the capacity numbers as promises. Ask what is running today. That habit works in Riyadh, in Abu Dhabi and in Saskatchewan.