du, a leading UAE telecom and digital services provider, has signed an MoU with Open Innovation AI, a UAE-based AI infrastructure and workload orchestration company. Facilitated in collaboration with the UAE Cyber Security Council (CSC), the partnership aims to accelerate the adoption of Agentic AI workloads across government entities and enterprises, strengthening the UAE’s sovereign AI ecosystem through du’s sub-brand du Tech.
The MoU was signed during the Digital Readiness Retreat 2026 in Dubai. Jasim Al Awadi, Chief ICT Officer at du, and Dr Abed Benaichouche, Co-Founder and CEO of Open Innovation AI, formalised the agreement in the presence of His Excellency Dr Mohamed Al Kuwaiti, Head of the UAE Cyber Security Council. The endorsement underscores the alignment between AI innovation and national cybersecurity priorities.
The collaboration leverages du Tech’s National Hypercloud platform, which has received CSC certification, ensuring locally governed infrastructure to support the UAE’s AI-driven economy. The initiative combines du’s advanced cloud and digital infrastructure capabilities with Open Innovation AI’s expertise in AI orchestration, GPU resource management, and AI security.
By integrating the National Hypercloud with Open Innovation AI’s platform, the partnership will enable public and private sector organisations to deploy and scale autonomous Agentic AI workloads with improved speed, efficiency, and regulatory compliance. It also lays the foundation for sovereign AI infrastructure designed to keep data, models, and compute resources within UAE jurisdiction.
His Excellency Dr Mohamed Al Kuwaiti, Head of the UAE Cyber Security Council, said sovereign AI is a national security priority. He noted that the collaboration reflects the UAE’s commitment to secure, in-country AI infrastructure and reinforces the importance of governed innovation within national frameworks.
Under the MoU, both parties will explore technical integration between platforms, GPU orchestration capabilities, sovereign AI development, and joint commercialisation opportunities. They will also assess deploying AI compute resources through du Tech’s infrastructure to support enterprise and government AI adoption.
Jasim Al Awadi said the initiative builds a secure, high-performance backbone for cognitive workloads, enabling organisations to deploy autonomous AI systems with confidence. Dr Abed Benaichouche added that the partnership lays the foundation for sovereign AI by ensuring secure, in-country access to compute while maintaining full data sovereignty.
The agreement further expands du’s AI ecosystem and reinforces du Tech’s role as a sovereign infrastructure enabler in the UAE.
