Dubai-based lender Emirates NBD has announced an enterprise collaboration with OpenAI to run GPT models on in-country infrastructure within the United Arab Emirates, Gulf News reported. The partnership makes Emirates NBD the first bank in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region to deploy OpenAI's models via domestic infrastructure.
Banks in the UAE are subject to stringent regulatory, security, and governance standards. According to the report, utilizing in-country inference enables the bank to implement advanced artificial intelligence at scale while complying with domestic rules on data residency, privacy, and operational resilience.
Emirates NBD plans to deploy the models across four primary domains: digital customer engagement, risk and compliance analytics, automation of knowledge-intensive workflows, and general employee productivity. The institution will also connect the models directly to its internal systems, application programming interfaces (APIs), and proprietary enterprise data to enhance digital service development and financial crime controls.
Miguel Rio-Tinto, Group Chief Digital and Information Officer at Emirates NBD, stated that the bank is embedding artificial intelligence directly into its core operating model to innovate quickly while maintaining regulatory alignment. The deployment aligns with the UAE's National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence 2031, which promotes responsible AI integration across strategic national sectors.
Sources
- Gulf News · 2026-10-19
