Donald J. Trump/Truth Social
Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Abu Dhabi’s deputy ruler and UAE national security advisor, met US President Donald Trump at the White House on Tuesday, holding talks on economic and technological cooperation.
“Discussions included ways for our countries to increase our partnership for advancing our economic and technological futures,” Trump said in a Truth Social post.
The UAE and the US are partners in bringing peace and security to the Middle East and the world, he said.
However, no other details were shared on the technology cooperation.
Earlier in the day, Sheikh Tahnoon met Scott Bessent, the US treasury secretary , to discuss ways to enhance cooperation in finance, artificial intelligence (AI), energy and infrastructure, the senior UAE official said in post on social messaging platform X.
Bessent said he hoped to “build on” existing “economic, investment, and national security ties” while in office, according to the treasury department.
The meetings came during a visit to Washington by multiple UAE leaders, including Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, minister of industry and advanced technology and CEO of national oil company Adnoc.
On Monday, Al Jaber met JD Vance, US vice president, according to the UAE Embassy in Washington.
The embassy separately said Sheikh Tahnoon would meet with executives from tech majors such as Microsoft, Amazon, Palantir, Oracle, BlackRock, NVIDIA and xAI over a two-day stay in Washington.
The delegation aims to lay the groundwork for more UAE investment in America, the embassy said in a social media post.
Vance said in remarks before a business forum on Tuesday that the administration was “thrilled to have our friends from the UAE” visiting.
“And one of the things they consistently hammer upon — it’s something that unfortunately too few of our European allies tend to get — is that if you want to lead in artificial intelligence, you have got to be leading in energy production,” Vance said.
A main objective of Sheikh Tahnoon’s meetings is to persuade the White House to relax export restrictions on advanced semiconductors to enable the UAE to purchase more.
Before leaving office, former president Joe Biden introduced a three-tier system, and put the UAE along with much of the world in a middle grouping, subject to limitations on buying the best American chips, but not subject to an outright ban.
The UAE fears those limitations may impact its push to become a global data centres hub, according to Mohammed Soliman of McLarty Associates and the Middle East Institute in Washington DC.
“Sheikh Tahnoon may be here to propose a government-to-government AI agreement that supports the administration’s security and industrial policy objectives while steering clear of restrictive caps on the UAE,” Soliman told AGBI.
Sheikh Tahnoon serves as chairman of the UAE’s new AI investment vehicle MGX, as well as Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund ADQ.
The first deal officially announced during the meetings in Washington came in the AI domain.
On Tuesday, Abu Dhabi officials unveiled a new partnership with Microsoft and the UAE’s Core42 to establish a sovereign cloud capable of handling 11 million daily interactions between the government and its citizens, residents, and businesses.
Satya Nadella, Microsoft chairman and CEO, said the emirate “is leading the way” in using AI to transform public services.
UAE AI developer G42 — which formed a partnership with Microsoft last year in a $1.5 billion deal — owns Core42.
Abu Dhabi is seeking to digitalise 100 percent of its government services through an AED13 billion (US$3.54 billion) investment.
“We are setting a standard for AI adoption in the public sector, as we help Abu Dhabi become the world’s first AI-native government,” state-run WAM news agecny reported quoting Nadella.
