UAE: G42 Aims To Build One Billion AI Agents In 2026, Says CEO

Abu Dhabi-based technology giant G42 aims to build one billion artificial intelligence (AI) agents, its chief executive said on Wednesday.

“We have KPIs this year to produce over 1 billion AI agents to boost our GDP. These agents range from petroleum engineers to cybersecurity analysts. If we actually can deliver 1 billion AI agents at the end of this year, they actually work even just 12 hours, because they can work nonstop, they will be consuming probably close to one gigawatt of AI infrastructure. This is how bullish we are and why we're building this infrastructure in the UAE,” Peng Xiao said during a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum on Wednesday.

An AI agent is a software system that can perceive its environment, make decisions, and take actions to achieve specific goals, often with some level of autonomy.

During US President Donald Trump's visit to the UAE in May 2025, G42, along with OpenAI, Oracle, Nvidia, SoftBank Group, and Cisco, announced their partnership to build Stargate UAE, which is a next-generation AI infrastructure cluster that will run in the newly established 5-gigawatt UAE–US AI Campus in Abu Dhabi.

Stargate UAE is a 1-gigawatt compute cluster, which will be built by G42 and operated by OpenAI and Oracle.

G42 is a global leader in AI, delivering impactful solutions across sectors including government, healthcare, energy, finance, and space. Headquartered in Abu Dhabi and operating worldwide, G42 is building the Intelligence Grid to deliver intelligence on demand, securely and at scale.

Peng Xiao said over 7,000 construction workers in Abu Dhabi are working on the project, with over 100 cranes building the project of about 250 megawatts per quarter to deliver on this five-gigawatt project.

“We believe the UAE will consume a big chunk of that, but we also will be able to export those tokens as packaged intelligence to the rest of the world,” he said during the panel discussion.

The number of workers on the project has doubled, as nearly 3,500 people were working on the Stargate in Abu Dhabi.

Sarah Friar, chief financial officer of OpenAI; Michael Intrato, CEO of CoreWeave; and Rob Goldstein, chief operating officer, BlackRock, were the other panellists.

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