Abu Dhabi agrees OpenAI deals to transform government services and education

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Abu Dhabi and OpenAI sign four strategic agreements

Series of agreements made following meeting between Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed and Sam Altman

The National

November 02, 2026

Abu Dhabi has joined forces with global tech giant OpenAI on a series of landmark deals aimed at harnessing artificial intelligence across the government, food security and education.

The agreements were made following a meeting between Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI.

The Abu Dhabi government and OpenAI will launch the world's first AI-native Machine-Readable Government initiative, which bis being heralded as a key step in the emirate's goal to become the world's first AI-native government.

The high-tech initiative will translate a defined set of government policies and regulations into machine-readable form, enabling AI-powered systems to assist officials with routine regulatory compliance assessments, including those related to issuing permits and certificates.

Each assessment is traceable to the governing rule, while government officials retain oversight and accountability for final decisions.

Led and governed by the Department of Government Enablement – Abu Dhabi (DGE), MRG’s first pilot is already in production with the Abu Dhabi Agriculture and Food Safety Authority (ADAFSA), focused on food imports.

AI processing is powered by OpenAI’s UAE inference residency, with real-time model computation running on GPUs within UAE data centres.

Updated:

November 02, 2026, 5:36 AM