South Korea and UAE Forge Major AI and Semiconductor Alliance at Seoul Forum

On May 13, 2026, the Korea-UAE AI Infrastructure and Semiconductor Investment Forum opened at the Grand InterContinental Seoul Parnas, formalising a strategic bilateral relationship that positions both nations as co-architects of the next generation of AI compute infrastructure. The event was co-organised by South Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT, Ministry of Trade, Industry and Resources, and the Presidential Council on National AI Strategy. The forum was convened under the auspices of a joint working group established during the UAE's state visit to Seoul in November 2025, reflecting the seriousness with which both governments are treating this partnership.

The UAE sent a high-level delegation of 25 officials, led by Mohamed Alhawi, Assistant Undersecretary of the Ministry of Investment, and including representatives from Core42, MGX, the Abu Dhabi Research and Technology Council (ATRC), the Technology Innovation Institute (TII), Mubadala, and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. The breadth of the delegation — spanning sovereign investment, national AI companies, and government research institutions — signals that this is not a narrow trade deal but a comprehensive national AI infrastructure strategy. Korean participants included representatives from leading semiconductor manufacturers and AI research institutes, with discussions structured around combining Korean chip technology with UAE financial capacity and geographic advantage.

Central to the forum was the Stargate UAE project, the 5GW AI data centre campus under construction in Abu Dhabi that represents the world's largest AI infrastructure project outside the United States. Korean semiconductor firms are expected to play a critical role in equipping the campus with low-power, high-efficiency AI chips. South Korea's technological strengths align precisely with what large-scale AI infrastructure demands: Samsung and SK Hynix are global leaders in HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) and advanced packaging, the memory architectures at the heart of NVIDIA's most advanced AI accelerators. Securing access to Korean chip supply is a strategic hedge that complements the UAE's existing partnerships with American technology firms.

The forum reflects a broader pattern in Gulf AI strategy: assembling a diversified ecosystem of technology partners rather than depending on any single nation's supply chain. The UAE already has deep partnerships with US hyperscalers — OpenAI, Oracle, NVIDIA, Microsoft — embedded in the Stargate UAE project. Adding South Korea's semiconductor expertise creates a more resilient technological foundation. For the UAE, the ability to combine American software innovation with Asian hardware precision positions Abu Dhabi not merely as an AI adopter but as an infrastructure power in its own right, capable of hosting and shaping the global AI value chain.

For organizations operating across the Gulf — whether deploying enterprise AI platforms, building Arabic-language models, or scaling computer vision applications — the expansion of regional AI infrastructure carries direct consequences. Diverge's DivergeInsight platform, which delivers real-time AI analytics for enterprise decision-makers, and DivergeGPT, the sovereign Arabic AI assistant, both depend on the availability of advanced compute at scale. A more robust regional semiconductor supply chain translates directly into lower inference costs, faster deployment cycles, and greater local data sovereignty for the enterprise AI solutions that Gulf businesses are actively building.

The Korea-UAE forum signals that the infrastructure layer of AI is becoming as strategically contested as the model layer. Nations that can secure both capital and silicon — combining investment capacity with access to cutting-edge semiconductor manufacturing — will define the geography of global AI power over the next decade. Abu Dhabi's emerging position at the intersection of American software innovation, Korean hardware expertise, and vast sovereign capital positions the emirate as one of the world's most consequential AI infrastructure hubs. The decisions being made in Seoul and Abu Dhabi in May 2026 will shape who leads the next chapter of the AI era.