Omar Al Olama became the world’s first AI minister in 2017. That early institutional bet now underpins a far broader buildout, one that UAE commercial attache to the United States Jawaher Almheiri described Tuesday as investing across “every layer of the US AI ecosystem.”
Almheiri was speaking during a panel at the Pax Silica forum, a non-partisan industry gathering organized by the US Energy Association. The forum centers on a US-led initiative designed to secure technology supplies essential for AI development and infrastructure maintenance through international partnerships. Her remarks laid out the operational logic connecting the UAE’s energy portfolio to its data center ambitions.
Additional reference context is available at https://www.thenationalnews.com/future/technology/2026/07/28/uaes-diverse-energy-mix-and-us-partnerships-will-bolster-ai-goals-official-says/.
“The UAE has taken actions to create a diverse energy mix,” Almheiri said. “We’ve invested in low-carbon fuels, commercially viable renewables and nuclear power.” That breadth is not incidental. Data centers running AI workloads at scale demand sustained, reliable power, and the UAE’s energy strategy is built around meeting that requirement.
The construction pipeline is substantial. Within the US-UAE AI acceleration working group, Almheiri noted that “UAE companies has committed to expand its AI investments in the US, a huge chunk of that includes data centres, digital infrastructure and energy projects.” The companies driving those commitments, XRG, Masdar, and 2PointZero, each cover different layers of the infrastructure stack, from energy generation through to digital buildout.
Meanwhile, a defence dimension formalized on the same day. The US military’s Central Command announced the formation of Task Force Talon Synapse, a joint AI task force based in Abu Dhabi. Centcom said the initiative will concentrate on “accelerating the development of military artificial intelligence applications,” adding a security layer to the commercial and technological cooperation already in progress.
The Pax Silica coalition itself brings together multiple countries pursuing parallel strategies. At Tuesday’s forum, Almheiri sat alongside Carlos Pineda Cruz, minister counselor for El Salvador’s embassy in Washington, and Shay Podoler, director of regulatory trade policy for Israel’s mission to the US. The White House has framed the coalition as a mechanism to prevent Chinese dominance of the technology supply chain as nations compete for AI leadership, making supply-chain coordination as much a geopolitical instrument as a procurement one.
Al Olama, who has held the AI minister role continuously since 2017 and now carries the title Minister of State for AI, Digital Economy and Remote Work Applications, represents the institutional continuity behind these commitments. The UAE is not improvising. Its strategy links energy supply chains, digital infrastructure, regulatory frameworks, and military cooperation into a single national posture.
What remains to be tested is execution at scale. Commitments from XRG, Masdar, and 2PointZero are on record, Task Force Talon Synapse is stood up in Abu Dhabi, and the Pax Silica framework is active. Whether the data centers get built on schedule, and whether the energy mix proves sufficient to power them, will determine how much of this strategy translates from announcement into operational reality.