Artificial Intelligence

UAE to plough $440bn into US energy to meet AI demand

June 18, 2025, 9:42 AM

Adnoc CEO Sultan Al Jaber said XRG plans to invest $440 billion into US energy over the next decade

$440bn earmarked for US energy
Up to 150GW in five years
Grids built for ‘different century’

Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc) CEO Sultan Al Jaber has urged an overhaul of the electricity grid for the artificial intelligence era as he pledged a six-fold increase in investments in the United States.

Al Jaber, who also serves as the Emirates’ minister of industry and technology, told the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Forum in Washington that XRG, Adnoc’s global investments arm, plans to put $440 billion into the US energy industry over the next decade.

His remarks in the US capital came as the industry braces for impact from the growing military confrontation between Israel and Iran. Al Jaber reiterated UAE calls for “de-escalation and diplomacy”.

AI is fuelling exponential growth in the demand for power in the US, which will need 50 to 150 gigawatts of “new installed capacity” in the next five years, Al Jaber said.

Adapting to this new landscape, where a single hyperscaler data centre can consume “as much electricity as a city the size of Pittsburgh”, is both a technical challenge and a once-in-a-generation opportunity, he said.

The Adnoc chief said the industry will need to move in lockstep with the technology, finance and policy worlds to make it happen through an all-of-the-above energy mix ranging from fossil fuels to renewables to nuclear.

“Power generation is only half of the story, though,” Al Jaber said. “Getting the power to the end user is the other half, and in fact it’s the more complex part of that equation.”

“You can’t run tomorrow’s technology on yesterday’s grid,” he added. “And many of our grids were built for a completely different century.”

Investments of up to $300 billion a year in the US alone are needed to solve this bottleneck, whereby it can take more than three years to install key components such as transformers and turbines, according to Al Jaber.

“Currently, there are about 2,600GW of plant capacity around the world waiting for a proper grid connection,” he said.

XRG, established in 2024, is an investor in the largest LNG plant in Texas, while Adnoc’s renewable energy subsidiary Masdar, of which Al Jaber is chairman, has developed 5.5GW of production and storage capacity “from coast to coast”, according to the executive.

The companies have just opened an office in Washington DC to spearhead the new investment commitments, he said.

Other senior UAE officials speaking during different sessions of the conference on Tuesday underscored the importance of the expanding partnership with the US in building out the ever-growing AI infrastructure, and that time is of the essence.

“It’s so important to understand that time is not on our side,” said Mariam Almheiri, group CEO of 2PointZero and chair of the international affairs office at the Presidential Court of the UAE. “We need to scale and we need to scale fast.”

2PointZero is an Abu Dhabi-based holding company that invests across the AI supply chain, from critical minerals to cable manufacturing, and is targeting a stock market listing this year.

Mohamed Al Hammadi, CEO and managing director of the Emirates Nuclear Energy Company (Enec), described himself as “very, very bullish” on the US market and about his company’s prospects here.

“In the next five years, we will hopefully generate electrons with partners who are serious to capitalise on those business opportunities,” he said