OpenAI Signs Four Abu Dhabi Deals, From Oil Giant ADNOC to AI-Checked Permits

OpenAI has signed four agreements with Abu Dhabi organizations, spanning energy, government and investment. The Abu Dhabi Media Office announced them on Monday, November 2, after OpenAI CEO Sam Altman met Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi.

AI-checked permits

The Abu Dhabi Government and OpenAI launched what the emirate calls the world’s first AI-native Machine-Readable Government initiative. It translates a defined set of government policies and regulations into machine-readable form, so AI systems can help officials with routine compliance assessments, including those for issuing permits and certificates.

According to the release, each assessment is traceable to the governing rule, and government officials keep oversight and accountability for final decisions. The first pilot is already in production with the Abu Dhabi Agriculture and Food Safety Authority, focused on food imports, with processing running on GPUs in UAE data centers through OpenAI’s UAE inference residency.

ADNOC and the energy deal

ADNOC, G42 (through its subsidiary Inception42) and OpenAI signed an agreement that Abu Dhabi says makes ADNOC the first company in the energy sector to deploy OpenAI’s frontier technology. It will bring AI into ADNOC’s operational, investment and commercial decisions, running on OpenAI’s GPT models with in-country inference in the UAE.

Investment and a five-year deal

Sovereign investor Mubadala, Inception42 and OpenAI will apply AI to investment analysis, opportunity identification and risk assessment. Separately, Inception42 and OpenAI signed a five-year agreement to support frontier AI adoption across government, enterprise and education in the UAE.

CNBC notes the deals come as OpenAI looks to Gulf investors for funding; that reported round is not part of the announced agreements.