The United Arab Emirates is said to be revising plans for a 5-gigawatt AI data center project after Iranian missile and drone attacks raised concerns about the security of critical infrastructure.
The OpenAI and Nvidia-backed project was originally envisaged as a 10-square-mile campus in Abu Dhabi but will likely be reconfigured as a network of data centers spread across the UAE, Reuters reported on Friday, citing people with knowledge of the matter.
That shift follows March attacks that damaged two Amazon Web Services data centers in the UAE and one in Bahrain, disrupting cloud services in the region. In April, Iranian armed forces released a video warning that Stargate UAE could be a target, with a map purporting to show the site near Al Dhafra Air Base.
Announced during President Donald Trump’s visit last year, the Stargate AI campus project is led by G42, the AI firm controlled by Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed al Nahyan. Oracle, Cisco, and SoftBank are also partners.
The broader project is part of the UAE’s effort to build domestic AI infrastructure and expand access to advanced models. OpenAI said at launch that the infrastructure could provide compute capacity within a 2,000-mile radius, potentially reaching up to half the world’s population.
Construction on the first phase, a $30-billion, 1-gigawatt compute cluster known as Stargate UAE, began last year, with the first 200 megawatts of capacity due online this year.
G42 told Reuters that construction continues as planned, adding that "the project's specifics are subject to continuous review in line with security, resilience and operational standards."
Meanwhile, authorities are weighing air defenses, electronic jamming equipment, blast-resistant concrete, and putting the most sensitive facilities underground or inside mountains in Ras Al Khaimah and Fujairah, sources told Reuters.