Gulf states double down on AI mega-deals, from HUMAIN to Qatar’s Qai

The Gulf is quietly becoming one of the main financiers and customers of frontier AI. HUMAIN, G42, MGX and now Qatar’s Qai form a kind of regional AI sovereign wealth complex: they sign massive chip deals with Nvidia and Qualcomm, fund data centers with BlackRock and Brookfield, and back model labs like Anthropic and OpenAI. That capital isn’t just passive; it’s tied to national strategies to diversify away from hydrocarbons by owning compute, data centers and applied AI stacks. ([semafor.com](https://www.semafor.com/article/12/31/2025/gulf-ai-deals-in-2025-reveal-ambitious-national-strategies))

For the AGI race, this concentration of money and infrastructure in the Gulf has two big implications. First, it gives US and Chinese model labs additional deep‑pocketed patrons, making a slowdown driven purely by Western capital discipline less likely. Second, it introduces another axis of geopolitical bargaining: access to energy‑rich, policy‑friendly data center campuses like Stargate UAE could become as strategically important as access to leading GPUs. If these national champions use their leverage to demand preferred access to cutting‑edge models or co‑developed systems, we may see a multipolar AGI ecosystem where compute, data and talent are increasingly brokered through a handful of state‑aligned entities.