OpenAI’s Altman travels to UAE to sign energy, investment deals

[DUBAI] OpenAI signed deals to deploy its technology across energy companies, investment firms and government agencies in the United Arab Emirates, deepening ties as it seeks billions of dollars in funding from the country’s state-backed investors.

The ChatGPT-maker’s chief executive officer Sam Altman travelled to Abu Dhabi for talks with Crown Prince Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed Al Nahyan, the Abu Dhabi media office said on Monday (Nov 2) in a statement. Altman also attended the UAE’s biggest oil show, ADIPEC.

Top artificial intelligence firms, including OpenAI and Anthropic, have turned to deep-pocketed investors in the Middle East to meet their intense capital needs to develop and support cutting-edge AI software.

Bloomberg News reported in October that OpenAI was in talks with multiple UAE-based investment funds, including Abu Dhabi-based MGX, to help anchor a US$30 billion round of financing.

Under the deals signed on Monday, Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc) became the first energy company to deploy OpenAI’s frontier technology, according to the statement.

Adnoc and AI firm G42 signed a deal with OpenAI under which the state energy firm will integrate advanced AI capabilities across its operations, the Abu Dhabi media office said.

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Adnoc said separately that OpenAI’s agents will “continuously forecast crude oil supply, demand, prices and margins, predict their impacts before they occur”.

OpenAI also signed a deal with Mubadala and Inception42 to apply advanced AI capabilities to investment analysis.

Alongside the UAE’s Department of Government Enablement, the San Francisco-based company also launched an AI-native Machine-Readable Government initiative.

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These developments come as US oil firms ExxonMobil and Chevron last week cancelled plans for their executives to travel to the Gulf country and join the ADIPEC event, citing security concerns.

Fears of fresh US attacks on Iran and retaliatory strikes by Teheran have gripped the oil markets in recent days.

US President Donald Trump has said he would not launch an attack on Iran before the US midterm elections on Tuesday, but on Oct 30 said Washington may carry out another military operation against Iran.

World’s energy supply buffers eroded, Adnoc CEO says

The world has eroded its supply buffers by draining nearly one billion oil barrels from global inventories since the US-Israeli war on Iran disrupted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, the CEO of Adnoc said.

Diesel stockpiles in some areas are at 35-year lows for this time of the season, while others face an liquefied natural gas supply gap of 600 billion cubic feet, Sultan Al Jaber said on Monday at the ADIPEC conference.

Prices of diesel in many markets have surged to record highs, boosted by wartime supply disruptions, and pose inflation and cost-of-living threats to governments and consumers.

“We need expanded strategic storage, larger stockpiles of products, and flexible refining capacity closer to consumer markets,” Al Jaber said. “Infrastructure must be built before it is needed and enabled by advanced logistics.”

The cost of shipping and logistics has risen to 30 per cent of the cost of a barrel, from 5 per cent before the Iran war, Al Jaber said.

The international benchmark Brent is trading around US$110 a barrel, up about 50 per cent from February just before the war began.

In October, the International Energy Agency agreed to release more than 20 million barrels of diesel to the market and any oil remaining from a record emergency reserves release pledged in March to boost supply and cool soaring prices.

Amin Nasser, CEO of Saudi Arabia’s state oil company Saudi Aramco said in October that fewer than six billion barrels of commercial inventories remained, with the vast majority not practically available. REUTERS