Oracle has deployed its first high-performance AI supercluster in Abu Dhabi, marking a significant expansion of its cloud infrastructure in the Middle East. The new facility, powered by over 4,000 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs, represents the region’s first deployment of this scale and is designed to accelerate AI adoption across key sectors.
Meeting Regional Demand for AI Compute
The supercluster directly addresses the growing need for powerful AI compute capabilities within the Middle East. Previously, organizations often relied on infrastructure located in Europe or North America, raising concerns about data sovereignty and latency. This new deployment provides governments and enterprises with advanced AI resources within the region, ensuring greater control over their data.
Key industries set to benefit include: smart government initiatives, energy, financial services, healthcare, logistics, aviation, and telecommunications. The availability of this infrastructure supports Abu Dhabi’s ambitious goal of becoming the world’s first fully AI-native government by 2027.
Performance and Efficiency Gains
The NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs deliver substantial improvements in AI workload performance. According to Oracle, the new GPUs offer up to 30 times faster real-time large language model inference, while also reducing total cost of ownership by 25% and slashing energy consumption by the same margin. This makes AI workloads more efficient and accessible.
Oracle’s distributed cloud architecture allows customers to run demanding AI tasks – including frontier model training, scientific computing, and recommender systems – across a global network. The OCI Supercluster technology is capable of scaling to an impressive 131,072 GPUs, enabling zettascale performance.
Strategic Expansion in the Middle East
Oracle’s investment in the Abu Dhabi cloud region has increased fivefold, reflecting the escalating demand for regional computing capacity. The company operates multiple public cloud regions across the Middle East, including Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Saudi Arabia (Jeddah), with plans for further expansion into Riyadh and NEOM.
In addition to the $14 billion investment in Saudi Arabia’s digital infrastructure over the next decade, Oracle is a key partner in the Stargate UAE project alongside G42, OpenAI, Nvidia, Cisco, and SoftBank. The first 200MW of next-generation AI compute capacity is scheduled to come online in 2026.
Oracle’s unique ability to deliver its full suite of AI and cloud services at the edge, in customer data centers, across clouds, or in the public cloud provides governments and regulated industries with unparalleled control over data residency, latency, and AI sovereignty.
The supercluster’s deployment underscores a broader trend: the rise of sovereign AI initiatives and the increasing importance of localized compute power for regulated industries. The availability of such infrastructure will likely accelerate AI adoption across the Middle East, enabling governments and businesses to leverage advanced technologies while maintaining control over their data and operations.
