G42 and a Vietnamese consortium (FPT Corporation and Viet Thai Group) have signed an agreement to develop AI capabilities and cloud infrastructure across Vietnam. The initiative is backed by consumption commitments of up to $1 billion and aims to support Vietnam's ambition to become a leading AI hub in Southeast Asia. The partnership will deploy cloud capacity across three data center locations in Vietnam to support public and private sector workloads. Why it matters: This marks a significant expansion of G42's footprint in Southeast Asia, fostering AI infrastructure development while respecting national data sovereignty.
G42 and Cerebras, in partnership with MBZUAI and C-DAC, will deploy an 8 exaflop AI supercomputer in India. The system will operate under India's governance frameworks, with all data remaining within national jurisdiction to meet sovereign security and compliance requirements. The supercomputer will be accessible to Indian researchers, startups, and government entities under the India AI Mission.
This study assesses workforce preparedness for AI in the GCC region, using socio-technical systems theory to analyze national AI strategies and initiatives in KSA, UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Oman. The research combines TF-IDF analysis, case studies of MBZUAI and SDAIA Academy, and scenario planning to evaluate the balance between technical capacity and social alignment. The study identifies a potential two-track talent system and emphasizes the importance of regulatory convergence for successful AI adoption.
This paper analyzes the energy consumption and carbon footprint of LLM inference in the UAE compared to Iceland, Germany, and the USA. The study uses DeepSeek Coder 1.3B and the HumanEval dataset to evaluate code generation. It provides a comparative analysis of geographical trade-offs for climate-aware AI deployment, specifically addressing the challenges and potential of datacenters in desert regions.
MBZUAI has launched the Ruwwad AI Scholars (RAIS) program, a postdoctoral fellowship for Emirati Ph.D. graduates to undertake two-year, fully-funded research positions at leading global institutions. The program aims to cultivate local talent in AI and computational research, with the goal of strengthening participants' eligibility for faculty positions at MBZUAI. The fellowship covers a stipend, research funds, insurance, relocation support, and conference travel.