The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has announced plans to deploy a national-scale AI supercomputer in India with 8 exaflops of computing power. This milestone marks a significant step in strengthening India’s sovereign AI infrastructure and expanding domestic AI capabilities.

The system will be delivered through a collaboration between G42, the Abu Dhabi-based global technology group, and Cerebras, makers of the world’s fastest AI inference systems. The project also involves Mohamed Bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) and India’s Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC).

The announcement was made during the AI Impact Summit 2026 in New Delhi, following the 5th India-UAE Strategic Dialogue in December 2025 and the UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan’s visit to India in January 2026. These engagements strengthened partnerships across defense, technology, space, and energy sectors.

Exaflop-Scale Computing for India

With 8 exaflops of peak computing capacity, the supercomputer represents India’s transition into exaflop-scale AI infrastructure. It will significantly enhance the country’s ability to develop advanced AI models, supporting both research and industry innovation.

Hosted entirely within India, the system will comply with national governance and data sovereignty frameworks, ensuring that all data remains within Indian jurisdiction. It is designed to meet strict security and compliance requirements, forming a core component of the India AI Mission.

Enabling AI Innovation Across the Nation

Manu Jain, CEO of G42 India, stated:
“Sovereign AI infrastructure is crucial for national competitiveness. This project enables India to develop AI at scale while ensuring full data security. Researchers, innovators, and enterprises across the country will gain access to world-class computational resources.”

The supercomputer will be accessible to a wide range of stakeholders, including premier research institutions, startups, SMEs, and government ministries. This approach aims to democratize AI access, lowering barriers for innovation and accelerating AI solutions for India’s 1.4 billion citizens.

Advancing Research and Education

Richard Morton, Executive Director at MBZUAI, emphasized:
“This collaboration supports AI research and education in India, helping address critical challenges in healthcare, agriculture, and education. Researchers and students will gain unprecedented access to high-performance AI compute.”

Andy Hock, Chief Strategy Officer at Cerebras, added:
“Our technology has powered the most demanding AI workloads globally. Deploying this system in India will accelerate training and inference of large-scale AI models, enabling solutions tailored to India’s specific needs.”

Strengthening Regional AI Leadership

This project builds on G42’s commitment to helping nations develop domestic AI capability. In December 2025, G42 and MBZUAI launched NANDA 87B, an open-source Hindi-English large language model with 87 billion parameters.

As one of the fastest-growing digital economies, India is a key player in regional AI innovation. The new exaflop supercomputer will empower the country to develop, deploy, and scale AI solutions securely within its own borders, supporting both research excellence and economic growth.