Rod Solaimani Highlights UAE’s AI Optimism and Infrastructure Investments at ADIPEC 2026.
Abu Dhabi: Nearly 80% of UAE residents aged 18 to 34 use ChatGPT every week, according to Rod Solaimani, OpenAI’s Policy & Partnerships Lead for MENA and Central Asia. He said people across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) are optimistic about artificial intelligence (AI) and its potential to create new job opportunities as the region continues to develop.
Speaking in an interview at ADIPEC 2026, Solaimani described the UAE and the wider MENA region as distinctive for combining strong optimism about AI with significant investments in infrastructure, energy, computing capacity and talent.
Solaimani said OpenAI had been working with regional partners to advance this vision for more than three years. He cited collaborations with ADNOC, the Department of Government Enablement (DGE), Mubadala and Inception.
He stressed that access to AI tools must go hand in hand with training that enables people to use them effectively in their work. The DGE, he said, is piloting an AI upskilling programme for 20,000 government employees. At ADNOC, ChatGPT and Codex have been made available to 40,000 people, with Solaimani reporting a 97% utilisation rate.
Solaimani also cautioned against viewing AI adoption as a choice between two opposing approaches, such as on-premises or cloud-based systems, open-source or closed-source models, or one AI provider over another.
Instead, he argued that leaders should focus on identifying the combination of tools that best meets people’s needs.
He said the key question for decision-makers should be: “How do we best serve our people? What is the holistic solution that supports them and their day-to-day lives?”
Where should AI be used?
On the subject of AI sovereignty, Solaimani highlighted the importance of local processing. He said the UAE became the third region globally, after the United States and Europe, where OpenAI models were available for in-country inference.
He also pointed to investments in localised Arabic-language models in 2023, describing them as an important step towards attracting talent and building a sustainable technology ecosystem.
“The researchers and engineers who worked on them were now moving on to larger projects, founding startups or joining enterprises, and that the investment would only see dividends for decades to come,” he added.
Solaimani said the UAE’s investments in AI could create opportunities for researchers and engineers, particularly through startups and enterprise-led projects. He also highlighted practical applications of the technology, ranging from helping students prepare study materials to supporting entrepreneurs in developing business ideas.
Partnerships beyond business
At ADNOC, the partnership with OpenAI focuses on applying AI across key operational areas, including field development planning, drilling decisions and reserve estimation.
The collaboration is also exploring ways to optimise downstream trading and improve workforce productivity, Solaimani said.
“Access is not enough. You have to enable and empower your people,” he said, addressing what he described as the ‘elephant in the room’.
He added: “I’d say this part of the world is taking that ambition and vision and turning them into action. They’re doing so across various pilot projects, industries and government initiatives, while upskilling their people along the way.”
Another aspect of the collaboration is the development of an “intelligence layer” designed to help ADNOC employees access and work with the company’s internal data. The system checks that users’ queries, labels and terminology are aligned with the relevant information.
Solaimani said future areas of collaboration could also include robotics and offshore operations.
