UAE Reconfigures 5GW AI Data-Centre Plan After Iran-Linked Attacks, Moves to Dispersed, Hardened Sites

The United Arab Emirates is quietly revising plans for a 5-gigawatt artificial intelligence data-centre development — one of the largest projects of its kind outside the United States — after regional attacks linked to Iran prompted officials to rethink how and where critical infrastructure should be built, Reuters reported, citing six people familiar with the discussions.

Overview

What had been planned as a single 10-square-mile (26-square-kilometre) campus in Abu Dhabi is now expected to become a network of dispersed data centres across the UAE, four anonymous sources said. Officials are also examining ways to strengthen protection against drone and missile strikes, including deploying air-defence systems and placing some facilities below ground or inside natural terrain where feasible.

Why Officials Are Reassessing Plans

Emirati authorities began reassessing the masterplan after Tehran launched missiles and drones at Gulf states hosting U.S. forces in retaliation for U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iranian targets. In March, attacks damaged two Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centres in the UAE and another in Bahrain, disrupting cloud services in the region. An April video from Iran's armed forces named the Stargate UAE complex as a potential target and included a map purporting to show the site.

Project Details And Partners

The initiative — announced during former President Donald Trump’s visit last year as the UAE–US AI Campus — is central to Abu Dhabi’s push to pivot its economy away from oil and become a global AI hub. It is led by G42, an AI firm linked to Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the UAE national security adviser.

The first phase, called Stargate UAE, is a $30 billion, 1-gigawatt compute cluster. Construction began last year and the initial 200 megawatts were scheduled to come online this year. Partners named in the project include Oracle, OpenAI, Nvidia, Cisco and Japan's SoftBank. Reuters reported that, in return for access to advanced U.S. technology, the UAE agreed to scale back certain AI collaborations with China and to invest in American-based Stargate infrastructure.

Security Measures Under Consideration

Sources said officials are weighing multiple hardening measures: dispersing capacities across several sites instead of a single campus; integrating active air-defence layers (drone and missile interceptors, and electronic jamming systems); building some facilities underground or within mountains where geography allows; and using blast-resistant construction, redundant power and cooling systems, and other resilience features.

"The project's specifics are subject to continuous review in line with the security, resilience and operational standards expected of critical infrastructure at this scale," a G42 spokesman told Reuters. OpenAI said it was working with the UAE and making "good progress on the infrastructure and adoption priorities needed to deliver it." Other partners did not respond or declined to comment.

Location And Operational Outlook

Two people familiar with planning confirmed the complex under construction is near Al Dhafra Air Base on Abu Dhabi's outskirts — a site that hosts U.S. forces and has been struck during the conflict. Industry sources told Reuters that construction of the first phase is expected to continue, albeit with design modifications to mitigate aerial threats, while later phases are likely to be spread across multiple locations.

It remains unclear how far the redesign has progressed, how much it will increase costs, or whether it will materially delay delivery of later phases. Sources spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss internal deliberations.

Reporting: Alexander Cornwell, Rami Ayyub and Timour Azhari. Writing/Editing: Alexander Cornwell; Editing by Alexandra Zavis.