UAE Reviews 5 GW AI Campus Plan, Weighs Multi-Emirate Deployment
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The UAE is reviewing the design of a planned 5 GW US-UAE AI campus that was originally intended to be concentrated in Abu Dhabi, with later phases potentially distributed across several emirates. The first StarGate UAE phase, valued at $30 billion, is expected to proceed as planned, according to the cited source.
- The UAE is reviewing a planned 5 GW AI campus originally designed as a single Abu Dhabi site.
- Later phases may be distributed across multiple emirates, while the $30 billion first StarGate UAE phase is expected to remain on plan.
- Reported security options include air defence, partial underground infrastructure and mountainous sites for sensitive-data processing.
- ISS estimates that certain physical-hardening measures could raise construction costs by about 5–7%.
- The redesign could shift large AI-campus planning toward greater geographic redundancy and physical protection in higher-risk regions.
The UAE is reconsidering the design of a planned 5 GW US-UAE AI campus that had been intended as a single-site development in Abu Dhabi. The emerging approach would distribute facilities across multiple emirates from the second phase onward, rather than concentrate the project on one campus.
The first phase, StarGate UAE, is expected to continue under the existing plan. That phase is valued at $30 billion. G42 is leading the project, with Nvidia, OpenAI and Oracle participating.
The source links the redesign to regional missile and drone risks. Measures under consideration reportedly include air-defence deployment near data centers, partial underground infrastructure and, for sensitive-data processing, potential facilities in mountainous areas. These options would represent a materially different infrastructure model from a conventional, highly concentrated AI campus, with resilience and physical protection carrying greater weight in site and facility design.
ISS has estimated that strengthening data-center barriers and protected server facilities could add about 5–7% to construction costs. That estimate applies to those specific protective measures; its applicability to the full StarGate UAE budget has not been established.
For the large-scale AI data-center market, the review could signal greater use of geographic redundancy, hardened construction and distributed workloads in locations facing geopolitical risk. Such an approach could increase demand for protective engineering, alternative sites and inter-site network capacity, although the effect on the project’s overall build volume, schedule and final cost has not been disclosed.
The source also claims that Iranian missile and drone attacks in March damaged two AWS data centers in the UAE and one facility in Bahrain, with AWS regional cloud services still experiencing disruption. Those claims were not accompanied by primary technical evidence in the provided material.
The review indicates that physical security is becoming a design constraint for large AI data-center infrastructure in geopolitically exposed regions. A shift from a single hyperscale campus toward geographically distributed and hardened facilities could raise CAPEX, complicate delivery schedules and increase requirements for site redundancy, protective construction and inter-site connectivity.
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