On November 2, 2026, the Abu Dhabi Press Office announced that Crown Prince Sheikh Khaled bin Mohammed bin Zayed received Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, and then witnessed the signing of four agreements between the American company and entities in the emirate, “in the government, energy and investment sectors.” The national oil company ADNOC, the sovereign wealth fund Mubadala and the administration itself are signatories. According to the press office, a first use is already in production: assistance in checking the conformity of food imports.
Four agreements, three of which go through Inception42
The press release details the four texts and their signatories:
- Energy : ADNOC, G42 (through its subsidiary Inception42) and OpenAI are integrating AI into the oil group’s operations, for better linked “operational, investment and commercial” decisions. The deployment is based on OpenAI’s GPT models, served by an “in-country inference infrastructure”.
- Administration : the government of Abu Dhabi and OpenAI are launching, without any intermediary mentioned, an initiative called “Machine-Readable Government”, led by the Department of Government Enablement (DGE).
- Investment : Mubadala, Inception42 and OpenAI will apply AI to investment analysis, opportunity identification and risk assessment.
- Adoption : Inception42 and OpenAI sign a five-year agreement to bring frontier AI to government, enterprise and education in the UAE, combining OpenAI’s models with Inception42’s consulting and integration services for large organizations in the country.
The text does not give any amount, and the only duration mentioned is that of the agreement with Inception42. He speaks of “agreements” without specifying their legal nature. As of November 2, the Inception42 news page did not yet mention them; his last entry was on October 16. The same page shows that the G42 subsidiary works with several suppliers and public customers: partnership with the DGE announced on February 10, 2026, then, on July 6, passage of AI agents “from pilots to operations” with Microsoft in administration and businesses.
At ADNOC as at Mubadala, OpenAI therefore signs alongside an Emirati integrator backed by G42, which also carries the five-year broadcast framework agreement. Only the administrative aspect is concluded directly.
A pilot presented as in production on food imports
The administrative aspect is the most concrete. According to the press office, the initiative translates “a defined set” of policies and regulations into a machine-readable form, so that AI systems assist public officials in routine compliance assessments, “including” for the issuance of permits and certificates. Each evaluation is linked to the rule on which it is based, and the agents retain supervision and responsibility for the final decision.
The first pilot is presented as “already in production” with the Abu Dhabi Agriculture and Food Safety Authority (ADAFSA), on food imports. Computing relies on OpenAI’s “inference residency” in the Emirates, with GPUs located in data centers across the country. For an agri-food exporter selling in the emirate, part of the conformity examination of imports can therefore already be prepared by a tool based on OpenAI models. The press office does not say which files or what part of the flow is affected, and the decision remains with the agents. The press office does not date the extension to areas other than food imports.
ADNOC, “first” energy company to deploy OpenAI?
The statement calls the energy deal “historic” and makes ADNOC “the first energy company to deploy OpenAI’s frontier technology.” On November 4, 2024, at the Adipec show, ADNOC and AIQ, an AI joint venture launched in 2020 with G42, of which ADNOC holds 49% since the entry of Presight (G42 group) in 2024, presented ENERGYai, an agent solution developed with G42 and Microsoft which was to integrate “OpenAI models”, according to the announcement taken by World Oil. On March 12, 2025, AIQ announced a three-year, $340 million contract to deploy ENERGYai in ADNOC’s upstream, on the Azure cloud stack and OpenAI models, according to the announcement by Oilfield Technology.
The OpenAI models will therefore not arrive at ADNOC in November 2026. The novelty lies in the place of OpenAI: the company becomes a signatory, alongside G42, of an agreement covering the group’s operations, on inference located in the Emirates. Microsoft is not mentioned in the November 2 press release; ADNOC signed an agreement with it in November 2025 to co-develop AI agents for its operations, reported by The National.
Aramco takes 49% of HUMAN the day before
On November 1, 2026, the Saudi sovereign fund PIF and Aramco finalized the operation which gives the oil group 49% of HUMAIN, the national AI company, with the PIF retaining 51%. Aramco is contributing AI assets and approximately 9.9 billion riyals ($2.6 billion) in cash over 2026, to support the planned deployment of 3 gigawatts of AI data centers by 2030 (our brief).
Aramco thus enters the capital of a national champion whose infrastructure it intends to use for its industrial operations. ADNOC, already a shareholder of AIQ, is expanding its use of models from an American laboratory.
In Germany, a public offering hosted in the country via SAP
Abu Dhabi is not its first agreement with OpenAI. In May 2025, the company announced Stargate UAE, presented as the first international deployment of its Stargate infrastructure project. The November 2 press release does not link the new uses to this campus and only speaks of data centers in connection with the administrative initiative.
OpenAI offers hosted in the country also exist in Europe. On September 24, 2025, SAP and OpenAI announced “OpenAI for Germany” for German administrations and research institutes, with a launch “planned for 2026”. The assembly is carried out by a national integrator, the SAP subsidiary Delos Cloud, on an infrastructure in Germany based on Azure technology, which SAP plans to increase to 4,000 GPUs. The uses announced relate to routine administrative work, such as file management and administrative data analysis.
The administrative aspect of Abu Dhabi stands out on two points: it is concluded directly between the government and OpenAI, and it concerns regulatory control where each evaluation is linked to the rule on which it is based, the decision remaining signed by an agent.
The press office does not specify which data center performs these calculations, nor how many import files the ADAFSA pilot has already processed.
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