AI infrastructure provider Core42 has announced a new partnership with e&, a telecommunications firm. Both firms are based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
The deal would combine Core42’s Sovereign AI Cloud platform with e&’s digital infrastructure, thereby accelerating the latter’s development and deployment of AI products.
Additionally, the partnership would allow e& to provide a sovereign data solution for its UAE-based customers. DCD has approached Core42 and e& for comment.
“AI deployment at scale demands infrastructure that can operate securely, compliantly, and with the resilience required for real-world execution,” said Jaafar Al Hashmi, Core42’s vice-president of government and market development, in a statement. “This partnership with e& UAE extends sovereign AI from foundational infrastructure into an operational capability, integrating compute, connectivity, and implementation into a single framework built for deployment. By strengthening these invisible foundations, we are enabling organisations across the UAE to move beyond AI ambition and towards sustained, production-grade execution.”
Esam Mahmoud, SVP of SMB sales and marketing, e& UAE, added: “AI is becoming a key part of how organizations operate. Through our collaboration with Core42, we are enabling UAE enterprises and government entities a simpler, faster and more secure way to access sovereign GPU infrastructure, connect their data and operationalise AI at scale.
“This directly supports the UAE’s vision to build an AI-native economy and advance the national agentic AI agenda by enabling organisations to deploy intelligent systems that can analyse, decide and act with greater speed and confidence. The value of this platform is not only AI compute; it is the combination of AI infrastructure, private connectivity, local support and a practical route to production.”
Formerly known as Etisalat, e& serves 248 million customers across Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.
The provision of Sovereign AI Compute by Core42 to e& would, both firms claim, give the latter telecommunications firm’s customers in government, retail, and manufacturing faster and more affordable access to the former’s AI accelerators. This new arrangement was, the two companies added, complemented by e&’s introduction of GPU Connect, a service designed to simplify its customers’ interaction with AI products.
e& added that its partnership with Core42 would now enable it to implement the UAE government’s national agentic AI agenda by supporting more public- and private-sector organisations in deploying these types of applications.
Core42 is a sovereign cloud and AI infrastructure provider based in the UAE’s capital, Abu Dhabi. In addition to maintaining a sizeable presence in the Middle East, the firm has invested heavily in US data center markets. That includes an expansion in June of its AI cluster at a data center run by the operator Terawulf in Buffalo, New York, from 42MW to 60MW. In May, meanwhile, Core42 agreed a $550m loan with the bank HSBC to expand its presence in the US and Europe.
Learn more about the data center market in the Middle East and meet with other executives and experts in the region at the DCN Riyadh event next year.