OpenAI signed a cluster of new agreements with Abu Dhabi-based institutions spanning energy, government and investment on Monday, as CEO Sam Altman met with Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, according to the Abu Dhabi Media Office's own readout of the meeting.

The agreements include a deal between the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, AI infrastructure firm G42 and OpenAI to deploy OpenAI's frontier technology across ADNOC's operations. Separately, sovereign investor Mubadala and the AI venture Inception42 agreed with OpenAI to apply advanced AI tools to investment analysis, while the Abu Dhabi government launched an initiative with OpenAI to convert its own policies and regulations into machine-readable form. Inception42 and OpenAI also signed a five-year agreement to push frontier AI adoption across government, enterprise and education in the emirate.

"Abu Dhabi and the UAE are setting a bold, global standard for AI integration across both the public and private sectors," Altman said in a statement, adding that the UAE's ambitions are anchored in a commitment to safety, accessibility and responsible innovation.

A Bigger Funding Push

The deals landed the same day CNBC reported OpenAI is seeking up to $20 billion in a new funding round co-led by UAE investors, with some reporting citing figures as high as $30 billion at a valuation near $1.25 trillion. That would mark a further leap for a company that already closed a $122 billion raise in March, co-led by the Abu Dhabi investment firm MGX, which also helped lead Anthropic's $30 billion raise in February. The Middle East has emerged as one of the most important sources of capital for both OpenAI and Anthropic as the two labs race to fund ever-larger data-center buildouts.

"ANCHORED IN A COMMITMENT TO SAFETY, ACCESSIBILITY, AND RESPONSIBLE INNOVATION."

The push into the Gulf comes as U.S. tech giants increasingly build data centers in the region, drawn by cheap energy and deep sovereign-wealth pockets even as the ongoing Iran war has tested the appeal of Middle East infrastructure investment for some Western firms. ADNOC's partnership with OpenAI and G42 specifically aims to bring AI tools into oil-and-gas operations, from exploration modeling to logistics.

OpenAI's expansion into government services is notable too: the Abu Dhabi government's plan to convert regulations into machine-readable form would let AI systems query and interpret legal and regulatory text directly, a capability several governments have experimented with but few have deployed at national scale.

Others Are Also Leaning on Debt

OpenAI's fundraising push comes as the broader AI sector shows signs of financing strain. Oracle said Monday it would sell $10 billion in common stock and $10 billion in bonds to help fund its own AI data-center buildout, following Microsoft's $25 billion bond sale last week — its largest debt offering in nearly a decade — for the same purpose.

Wall Street's reaction to the wider AI financing wave was mixed: Oracle shares fell about 8% even after an analyst upgrade, while chipmaker stocks broadly struggled amid what traders have described as a rotation out of AI names and into more defensive sectors.