Artificial intelligence development is increasingly concentrated in major powers, with US private investment in AI reaching nearly $286 billion last year—more than 23 times the figure reported for China, according to Stanford University's 2026 AI Index cited by Khaleej Times. However, smaller states such as the UAE and Singapore are positioning themselves strategically by concentrating resources on specialized capabilities rather than attempting to duplicate full American or Chinese tech ecosystems.
In physical infrastructure, the UAE is deploying capital into compute capacity, headlined by the Stargate UAE project in Abu Dhabi. Planned as a one-gigawatt compute cluster within a wider five-gigawatt UAE-US AI campus, the facility is being built by G42, with operations handled by OpenAI and Oracle, and advanced semiconductors supplied by Nvidia. Its first 200-megawatt phase is scheduled to come online this year.
Spring Fu, Managing Director of The Academy at Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI), told Khaleej Times that mid-sized countries can convert scale into an advantage by streamlining government decisions and integrating into global partner networks. Fu stated that while compute power and capital can be mobilized rapidly, human talent remains the primary bottleneck needed to operate infrastructure, deploy enterprise systems, and guide regulatory oversight.
On workforce development, Stanford Index findings revealed that the UAE's concentration of AI talent grew 121 percent between 2019 and 2025, marking the fastest expansion among nations evaluated. To build internal public capability, the UAE federal government is collaborating with MBZUAI to train 80,000 government personnel across leadership and non-technical roles in agentic AI, following an executive study mission in September where 12 UAE officials examined Singapore's AI governance and policies.
Sources
- Khaleej Times · 2026-10-24
