Oracle is planning to significantly increase its investment in Abu Dhabi to expand its cloud and AI offerings in the UAE.

First reported by The National, Oracle's SVP for technology cloud and UAE country leader Nick Redshaw said: "To meet strong demand for Oracle Cloud in the UAE, we are making a 5X investment in the Abu Dhabi region."

The exact investment expected has not been shared. DCD has contacted Oracle for further information.

Redshaw later told The National: “There's plenty of people playing in this sphere … and we partner and we compete. Five years ago would have been different. Now it's a huge market. It's co-operative or 'co-opetition', that we're all going to work together, and there will be areas where we compete. So that's the ecosystem that we're working in. The good news is there's huge demand, there's huge investment. Customers need the capability. So we all work together.”

In January 2024, Oracle teamed up with telecoms company Du to develop a sovereign cloud platform in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). They expanded this to include AI services for the UAE government in June 2024.

The company has two UAE cloud regions: UAE East located in Dubai, which launched in September 2020, and UAE Central in Abu Dhabi, which launched in November 2021. The company has cloud regions in nearby Saudi Arabia, the second of which launched in August 2024 , and plans for a third were announced in February 2023.

The company is also planning a sovereign cloud region in Bahrain in partnership with Beyon Solutions.

Earlier this month, the Abu Dhabi government put out a call for the development of a single multi-cloud system that will serve more than 40 government entities.

Abu Dhabi is home to data centers operated by the likes of Gulf Data Hub, Core42, Etisalat, Equinix, Du, and Khazna Data Centers. Microsoft also has a cloud region in Abu Dhabi, while AWS has a region in the UAE.