Iranian military strikes have forced G42 and Core42 to dismantle their planned AI mega-campus in the UAE, canceling a major regional compute hub initiative.
The United Arab Emirates is redesigning its planned 5-gigawatt artificial intelligence project, moving from a centralized campus in Abu Dhabi toward a dispersed network of hardened facilities distributed across Ras Al Khaimah and Fujairah.
The shift follows Iranian military operations targeting regional infrastructure. In March 2026, drone strikes damaged Amazon Web Services data centers in the UAE and Bahrain, disrupting regional cloud and banking systems. In April, Iran released targeting footage identifying Stargate UAE—the project's planned $30 billion first phase—with coordinates locating it adjacent to Al Dhafra Air Base, a facility housing U.S. military personnel.
Originally envisioned as a 10-square-mile computing hub developed in partnership with American technology firms, the project is undergoing substantial strategic revision. Emirati officials are now calculating costs for moving sensitive infrastructure underground into mountain ranges, installing blast-resistant concrete, and deploying electronic jamming systems across multiple dispersed sites.
The flagship initiative was led by G42, an entity controlled by Emirati national security adviser Tahnoun bin Zayed. The project represented a geopolitical bargain: the UAE agreed to sever technological ties with China in exchange for advanced Nvidia microprocessors and infrastructure partnerships with American corporations including OpenAI, Oracle, and Cisco.
The dispersed infrastructure model introduces significant financial and logistical burdens. Fragmenting the unified mega-campus into isolated, hardened facilities increases energy consumption, expands physical security requirements, and complicates specialized cooling systems at each site. Planners are integrating localized missile interceptors, blast walls, and redundant power networks to withstand potential strikes.
While G42 and its Western partners maintain that construction proceeds as planned, the physical modifications underscore the project's vulnerability to regional security threats.