The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is quietly revising plans for a 5-gigawatt AI data centre project – one of the biggest outside the US – after the Iran war prompted a rethink of how and where critical infrastructure should be built, six people familiar with the matter told Reuters.
Originally envisaged as a 10-square-mile (26-square-kilometre) campus in Abu Dhabi, the project will now likely comprise a network of data centers spread across the UAE, according to four of the sources, who all spoke on condition of anonymity.
Authorities are also considering ways to better protect the facilities from drone and missile attacks, including with air defenses and by building some underground, they said. The likely modifications to the project’s blueprint have not previously been reported.
Plans for the UAE-US AI Campus, which is being built in partnership with American tech companies, were announced during President Donald Trump’s visit last year to the wealthy Gulf state.
The project is central to the UAE’s ambitions to become a global AI powerhouse as it shifts its economy away from oil.
It is led by G42, an AI firm controlled by Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed al Nahyan, the UAE national security adviser and brother of its president.
