Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, November 18, 2025- South Korea has agreed to join the UAE’s Stargate AI data-centre project, a move that brings one of Asia’s strongest chip and technology industries into one of the world’s biggest AI campus plans. The agreement was signed during President Lee Jae-myung’s state visit to Abu Dhabi.
During the summit, Lee said, “This is my first visit to the Middle East since taking office less than six months ago, and the UAE is the first country I am visiting as a state guest. Korea is ready for comprehensive cooperation for the next 100 years of partnership between the two nations. We have many areas in common that hold strategic importance, such as national security, defence, AI, nuclear power and health care.”
The deal positions Korea as a major technical partner to the Stargate UAE cluster, which is part of a planned 5-gigawatt AI campus led by G42 with support from OpenAI, Oracle, Nvidia, Cisco and SoftBank. The project’s first phase aims to bring 200 megawatts online, with a goal of reaching 1 gigawatt of AI-ready capacity.
South Korean companies are expected to supply not only memory chips but also help with power systems and data-centre engineering. Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix have already signed agreements with OpenAI to supply high-bandwidth memory and DRAM for the Stargate project. OpenAI said demand could reach 900,000 DRAM or HBM wafers a month, showing how large the compute requirement could become.
Officials in Seoul say the partnership goes beyond chip supply. Korea is also expected to support data-centre design, battery storage, and joint R&D efforts, which could strengthen both countries’ positions in the global AI supply chain.
For the UAE, Korea brings industrial scale and proven leadership in advanced memory, server components and clean-energy systems. For Korea, joining Stargate gives its semiconductor and energy firms a direct role in one of the world’s largest AI infrastructure projects.
Analysts say the move reflects a broader shift in where large AI data centres are being built. With Gulf states investing heavily in power-hungry AI campuses, partnerships like this could accelerate the region’s rise as a global hub for compute capacity.
.jpg)
