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The United Arab Emirates’ leader met US President Joe Biden in Washington on Monday to advance artificial intelligence co-operation as the Gulf nation tries to secure easier access to US-made technology.
The meeting comes during Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan’s first official trip to the US in seven years and underscores his determination to win White House support in his efforts to transform the UAE into an AI leader.
As well as discussing technology and trade, Biden said the UAE would now have “major defense partner” status along with India, to foster greater security ties through measures such as joint military training and exercises.
The UAE is one of the US’s most important allies in the Middle East, but relations have been strained at times in recent years. Talks for a formal security pact with Washington have stalled, and Abu Dhabi was infuriated by what it saw as a lukewarm US response to attacks on the UAE’s capital by Houthi rebels from Yemen in 2022.
Yet AI has brought new energy to the relationship. Oil-rich Abu Dhabi has made AI central to its plan to wean itself off fossil fuel exports and has taken a strategic decision to work with US companies producing cutting-edge technology.
“AI and new changes in cloud computing, etc, are going to change the way the world looks,” Anwar Gargash, Sheikh Mohamed’s diplomatic adviser, said in Dubai last week. “We cannot let this sort of wave of technological breakthroughs pass by us.
“If we believe that hydrocarbon is on the way out, slowly but surely, then we have to replace the revenue stream through something else,” he added.
However, the US last year added the Gulf states to a list of countries restricted from freely importing cutting-edge US-made AI chips over concerns about technology leaks to China. This means companies have to apply for licences to export the chips, and the process has held up some UAE companies’ AI plans.
The presidents instructed officials to develop a memorandum of understanding on AI co-operation, the next step in formalising the partnership. But they also sketched out several broad areas for collaboration, including supporting bilateral investment and “efficient licensing”.
One person briefed on the UAE’s plans said the Gulf state had wanted to sketch out a “road map” ahead of the upcoming US election “so that progress is locked in . . . whatever president assumes office in January”.
The person added officials were aiming to get the UAE’s export designation changed so it would be easier to get hold of chips.
Brad Smith, president of Microsoft, which invested $1.5bn in the UAE’s most important AI group G42 in April, told the Financial Times last week that clarity over the export controls was “emerging”, but it had “taken several months to work through”.
Smith added that export applications by Microsoft and other technology companies were not fully complete but were “getting very close”.
In a sign of the UAE’s drive to deepen relationships with US companies, G42 announced last week that it was working with Nvidia, the US company that makes chips critical for AI, on a weather forecasting initiative.
US companies looking to finance expensive AI projects have also welcomed Abu Dhabi’s petrodollars.
MGX, a new Abu Dhabi investment vehicle dedicated to AI, last week announced it was joining asset manager BlackRock, Global Infrastructure Partners and Microsoft to launch a $30bn fund to invest in data centres and the energy to power them.
Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the UAE’s national security adviser and chair of G42, visited Washington in June and has spearheaded the UAE’s efforts to secure US backing for its AI ambitions.
The FT previously reported that OpenAI founder Sam Altman and Sheikh Tahnoon were in discussions to finance an ambitious chipmaking project.
Gargash said Sheikh Tahnoon had “a good understanding of tech”, suggesting this could help the UAE’s negotiations with US officials and executives. “When he sits with somebody like Altman or whatever, he’s really talking his language,” Gargash said.
Sheikh Tahnoon attended the meeting between Biden and Sheikh Mohamed.