ADNOC and G42 enlist OpenAI for energy operations

Abu Dhabi’s ADNOC has agreed with OpenAI and technology group G42 to deploy advanced artificial intelligence across its energy business, becoming the first company in the sector to adopt OpenAI’s Frontier platform.

The multi-year partnership was announced on Monday at the ADIPEC energy conference as OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman visited Abu Dhabi and met Crown Prince Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who witnessed the signing.

ADNOC said the system would connect operational, investment and commercial decisions across production, processing, refining, logistics, sales and trading. The technology will use OpenAI’s GPT models and computing infrastructure located in the United Arab Emirates, allowing AI inference to take place within the country.

The company expects interconnected AI agents to assess how operational choices affect commercial performance and how market opportunities could influence production and investment plans. Its initial application will focus on field master planning, combining information from thousands of wells, multiple reservoirs and hundreds of surface facilities.

ADNOC said the technology could reduce the time required to prepare and optimise complex field development plans from months to hours. That represents a company projection rather than a measured outcome from the newly announced deployment.

The agreement involves G42 through its subsidiary Inception42. Financial terms, the investment required and a timetable for full implementation were not disclosed in the announcements.

Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, ADNOC’s managing director and group chief executive, said the partnership would transform field development, well management and commercial operations. Speaking at ADIPEC, he described the initiative as part of the company’s efforts to build an integrated, AI-enabled operating model.

Altman said more capable AI could address difficult challenges in energy by combining advanced models, domestic computing infrastructure and industry expertise. His comments placed the agreement within OpenAI’s effort to extend its technology beyond consumer applications into complex industrial systems.

The ADNOC arrangement was one of four agreements involving OpenAI and Abu Dhabi organisations announced following Altman’s meeting with Sheikh Khaled, who also chairs the Abu Dhabi Executive Council. Their discussions covered government transformation, digital infrastructure and the application of AI across priority economic sectors.

A separate initiative between Abu Dhabi’s government and OpenAI will convert selected policies and regulations into machine-readable formats, enabling AI systems to assist officials with routine compliance assessments, including permits and certificates. The Department of Government Enablement is overseeing the programme, while officials will remain responsible for final decisions.

The first pilot is operating with the Abu Dhabi Agriculture and Food Safety Authority and focuses on food imports. According to the Abu Dhabi Media Office, its AI processing uses computing resources within UAE data centres, with assessments traceable to the underlying regulatory rules.

Another agreement brings together sovereign investor Mubadala, Inception42 and OpenAI to apply AI to investment analysis, identifying opportunities and assessing risks. The parties have not announced financial commitments or quantified expected investment returns from that collaboration.

OpenAI and Inception42 also entered a five-year arrangement to support adoption of advanced AI across government, businesses and education. Their planned work includes enterprise solutions combining OpenAI’s models and engineering capabilities with Inception42’s applied AI services and consultancy programmes.

The agreements extend cooperation between Abu Dhabi’s institutions and OpenAI at a time when governments and large companies are seeking greater control over the location of computing infrastructure and the handling of sensitive operational data. The announced UAE-based inference arrangements address where models process requests, although the parties did not publish detailed technical or data-governance specifications.

For ADNOC, the new platform is intended to complement existing AI applications rather than replace them. The company says it already uses more than 200 AI applications, including ENERGYai, a specialist system developed with partners to support subsurface analysis and operational decisions.

ADNOC has identified reservoir modelling, asset management and operational efficiency as areas where AI can support its activities. The Frontier arrangement is designed to connect information from those specialist systems with decisions elsewhere in the business, rather than treating individual applications as separate tools.

Sheikh Khaled’s meeting with Altman took place during ADIPEC, where energy executives and technology companies are discussing investment, energy security and the growing electricity requirements of AI infrastructure. The Abu Dhabi Media Office said the four agreements covered the government, energy and investment sectors, with participating organisations outlining separate programmes for industrial deployment, public administration and institutional decision-making across Abu Dhabi.