In a year full of tech headlines in the Middle East, Qatar quietly made a consequential artificial intelligence announcement in the final days of 2025: On Dec. 8, the gas-rich Gulf state unveiled Qai, a new state-backed AI company that has formed a $20 billion joint venture with Canada’s Brookfield to develop AI infrastructure at home and abroad.

The move capped a year in which Gulf powers not only talked up AI ambitions but raced to secure the hardware, capital and political backing needed to translate ambitions into reality. At the center of this push are new national AI companies and investment vehicles, with Qai joining Saudi Arabia’s Humain, another state-backed AI firm launched in May ahead of US President Donald Trump’s high-profile Gulf tour. Both must make up ground on G42, a state-backed AI conglomerate launched in 2018 in the United Arab Emirates. 

The timing of Humain’s launch was deliberate. Trump's regional visit, the first overseas trip of his second term, marked a milestone in US-Gulf tech relations, unleashing a wave of dealmaking across data centers, chips and AI collaboration. This underscored how US-Gulf ties increasingly center on technology as Washington seeks to pull Middle Eastern allies away from China’s orbit. Those efforts paid dividends in 2025, as Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar eagerly aligned themselves with Trump’s tech agenda amid sharp swings in US foreign policy.

Speaking of high-profile visits, days after Qatar’s December announcement, Elon Musk was in Abu Dhabi meeting with Emirati leaders. It’s not fully clear why Tesla’s CEO was in town, with the UAE state news agency merely mentioning discussions on “advanced technology and artificial intelligence.” This comes as Musk’s satellite internet service, Starlink, has been expanding aggressively in the Middle East and the tech billionaire is reportedly gearing up to take SpaceX public in 2026.