By Maha El Dahan, Stephanie Kelly and Federico Maccioni
ABU DHABI, Nov 2 (Reuters) – Abu Dhabi’s ADNOC and artificial intelligence firm G42 on Monday signed a deal with OpenAI to deploy advanced AI capabilities across the state energy firm’s operations, marking the latest step in the ChatGPT maker’s deepening ties with the United Arab Emirates.
The agreement, signed at the ADIPEC conference in Abu Dhabi, will make ADNOC the first company in the energy sector to deploy OpenAI’s frontier technology, ADNOC CEO Sultan Al Jaber said.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said on of the challenges the company was facing is “energy”, adding that its most advanced models would be used to “take the hardest, most valuable problems” that ADNOC faces.
“We can bring down the cost of delivering great AI in almost every way, except, you know, atoms are still atoms and the physical world that has to power this, I think that is going to be the very dominant factor of the cost and the abundance and how much we can create,” he added.
The deal was announced as Altman met Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan while attending the UAE’s largest oil and gas gathering.
Altman said that the deal was the deal was “another step” in the relationship between OpenAI and the UAE.
STRONG UAE TIES
OpenAI is racing to secure investor commitments before rival Anthropic’s expected public market debut in mid-November, including from Abu Dhabi-based MGX, in a speedy fundraising that could value the ChatGPT maker at over $1.4 trillion, Reuters reported, citing sources.
OpenAI is also one of the partners for the first phase of a 5-gigawatt AI data centre project – one of the biggest outside the US – that the UAE is building in partnership with American tech companies.
Altman attended the conference as US oil firms ExxonMobil and Chevron last week cancelled plans for their executives to travel to the Gulf country and join the event, citing security concerns.
Fears of US attacks on Iran and retaliatory strikes by Tehran have gripped the oil markets in recent days. US President Donald Trump has said he would not launch an attack on Iran before the US midterm elections on November 3, but on Friday he said Washington may carry out another military operation against Iran.
However, several other executives from firms including BP, Italy’s Eni and Baker Hughes were at the event.
The Abu Dhabi Media Office said that OpenAI had signed deals with other Abu Dhabi vehicles, including with wealth fund Mubadala and G42 unit Inception42 to apply advanced AI capabilities to investment analysis, opportunity identification and risk assessment.
(Reporting by Maha El Dahan and Stephanie Kelly in Abu Dhabi and Federico Maccioni in Dubai; Editing by Jamie Freed and Louise Heavens)
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