Talal Al Kaissi, chief executive of Core42, argued at AI Everything Abu Dhabi that countries pursuing sovereign AI should secure trusted access to international compute rather than try to build every part of their infrastructure at home, Computer Weekly reported. He presented the UAE’s approach as a model of control over data and workloads that can coexist with infrastructure supplied by others. Two days earlier, Core42 had announced a partner programme to bring more companies onto its cloud and AI services in the UAE.
Key points
- Al Kaissi put the cost of gigawatt-scale AI infrastructure at around $50 billion and argued that countries need trusted partnerships for compute access.
- Core42 says its Microsoft-based sovereign public cloud places technical and policy controls over a public cloud backbone.
- Core42’s new partner programme lets eligible companies build or sell services for UAE customers with data residency and governance requirements.
- Partners and customers remain responsible for obtaining any regulatory or sector-specific approvals required for their solutions.
Core42 puts control above location
Al Kaissi described sovereignty as a matter of control, with each country setting its own tolerance for risk when it deploys AI and handles sensitive information. He said Core42 chiefly serves public bodies and regulated industries, but expects large companies outside regulated sectors to seek similar control over how their data is stored, processed and governed. His account puts decisions about individual workloads ahead of a single rule requiring every system to sit inside national borders.
Foreign governments’ jurisdiction over cloud providers is a central concern in that account, Al Kaissi said. Core42’s response is what he called a sovereign public cloud: a control plane built with Microsoft above a public cloud backbone, intended to provide technical and policy controls. He described a range of environments for data with different sensitivity levels, from fully isolated systems to sovereign public cloud deployments. The arrangement retains a role for an international provider while giving customers a means to govern particular workloads.
Al Kaissi also discussed digital embassies, under which a country could host or replicate critical data outside its borders while seeking to preserve sovereign protections through technical, legal and policy arrangements. He said such a construct could improve resilience without giving up control of sensitive information. The case for hosting data abroad rests, in his telling, on the protections attached to it and the authority a country can exercise over its use.
Core42 opens its UAE cloud to partners
Core42’s announcement on 5 October sets out a commercial route for that model in the UAE. The G42 company says its Core42 Partner Program began with more than 50 partners and that its cloud environment supports more than 47 Abu Dhabi government entities. It offers separate tracks for technology companies building services on its Sovereign Enabled Public Cloud and for channel partners selling Core42 cloud and AI services to customers with residency, security, control and compliance requirements.
Under the technology track, Core42 says software vendors and startups can use Microsoft Azure services while Core42 Insight supplies controls for data residency, governance, monitoring and security. Its teams offer partners help with architecture, compliance documentation and bringing solutions to market. The channel track gives resellers and other providers sales training and technical support. Core42 says eligible partners may also work with its sales teams on qualified opportunities, while selected partners may receive token credits, marketing support or co-investment for priority customer projects.
Those services do not transfer approval decisions to Core42. Its announcement says a solution’s suitability depends on the workload, the customer’s requirements and the applicable regulatory framework. Partners and customers remain responsible for securing any required regulatory or sector-specific approvals. Core42 says applications to the programme are open.
Al Kaissi puts compute access first
Al Kaissi estimated that AI infrastructure at gigawatt scale costs around $50 billion, an expenditure he said many countries cannot undertake. He expects them to seek trusted international partnerships for compute instead. His proposed test of strategic autonomy is therefore whether a country can obtain and govern the resources it needs, including resources located elsewhere. He said he did not expect any one country to do everything alone.
The UAE’s approach also sits alongside a separate call for oversight. A UAE official called for independent safety checks on frontier AI models, as AI Affairs previously reported. At Abu Dhabi, Al Kaissi attributed Core42’s progress to a UAE regulatory environment that he characterised as permissive while retaining oversight of critical workloads. That is his assessment of the environment in which the company operates.
Al Kaissi urged countries beginning sovereign AI programmes to examine initiatives elsewhere. He said the UAE had benchmarked other countries when developing its own approach and that some of those countries now benchmark the UAE. For national AI capability, he placed particular weight on strategic access to compute, whether the machines are within a country’s borders or outside them.
