GITEX GLOBAL 2025: Core42’s CEO on AI-native nations, sovereign cloud

At GITEX GLOBAL 2025, Core42 is showcasing its pivotal role in advancing sovereign cloud and AI infrastructure across the UAE and beyond. As the digital infrastructure arm of the G42 ecosystem, Core42 is at the heart of operationalising the group’s “Intelligence Grid” vision: building AI-native nations that integrate infrastructure, intelligence, and innovation into one framework.

In this interview, Kiril Evtimov, CEO of Core42, discusses the company’s new AI cloud offering, the importance of digital sovereignty, and how the company is shaping the foundation for a secure and globally competitive AI future.

What are you showcasing at GITEX GLOBAL 2025

We’re excited to return to GITEX and demonstrate the progress we’re making in advancing sovereign cloud and AI infrastructure across the UAE and beyond. This year, Core42 is taking centre stage within the G42 District in AI Hall 6, highlighting our role as the digital infrastructure arm of the G42 ecosystem. G42’s Intelligence Grid vision is redefining how nations can build AI-native societies by connecting infrastructure, intelligence, and innovation into one cohesive framework. Together with our sister companies, we are bringing this vision to life, and at GITEX GLOBAL 2025, we are showing how our offerings translate it into real-world outcomes that strengthen the UAE’s AI leadership and set new standards for secure and globally competitive AI infrastructure.

A major highlight of our participation is the introduction of our AI Cloud offering, a high-performance and sovereign platform that unites every leading accelerator within a single environment for all training, fine-tuning, and inference needs. We are also showcasing our Sovereign Public Cloud, the forthcoming Signature Private Cloud, and our Compass generative AI platform, alongside new strategic partnerships that will help extend the UAE’s leadership globally.

Overall, our participation aims to demonstrate the role we’re playing in operationalizing G42’s Intelligence Grid and powering the foundations of the next digital era.

What emerging technologies are you focusing on this year?

Our focus this year is on the technologies that make AI operational at scale. We are investing in the infrastructure, platforms, and controls that turn AI from experimentation into enterprise capability. Through our AI Cloud, we are giving customers on-demand access to the world’s most advanced accelerators within a sovereign, high-performance environment. This enables faster training, fine-tuning, and inference while ensuring compliance and data integrity. At the same time, Compass, our generative AI platform, is simplifying access to generative and agentic AI through a secure suite of APIs that allow developers to build with confidence.

We believe these technologies can play a central role in helping governments and enterprises move from adopting AI tools to embedding intelligence into their core workflows. As Core42, our aim is to help enable this process by making advanced AI accessible, trusted, and impactful, ensuring that organisations build their digital futures on infrastructure that combines performance with sovereignty.

How is Core42 shaping the future of AI infrastructure and digital sovereignty?

We believe the future of AI depends on sovereign infrastructure that combines performance, trust, and accessibility. Nations and enterprises want to innovate with confidence, knowing their data, models, and operations remain under their control. Core42 has proven that sovereignty and scale can work in harmony, and that model is now being recognized globally as the blueprint for responsible AI adoption.

We are building that foundation across every layer of the stack. The Sovereign Public Cloud has already enabled more than 50 public and private organisations to operate critical workloads securely within national borders, while the forthcoming Signature Private Cloud will extend those capabilities to classified and highly regulated environments.

Our AI Cloud brings together the world’s leading accelerators in one unified, sovereign platform for training and inference at scale, and Compass makes generative and agentic AI accessible through secure APIs. Together, these technologies are setting the stage for a new category of sovereign infrastructure; one that supports innovation, ensures compliance, and gives nations and enterprises the confidence to lead in the AI era.

G42’s theme at GITEX this year is ‘Building AI-Native Nations.’ How is Core42 bringing this vision to life in the UAE and beyond?

Building AI-Native Nations captures the essence of what the UAE is striving to achieve – an economy and society that are not just enabled by AI, but built upon it. At Core42, we are helping to bring this vision to life by delivering the digital foundations that make it possible. Our role within the G42 ecosystem is to provide the sovereign cloud and AI infrastructure that governments and enterprises depend on to scale innovation securely, responsibly, and with full regulatory assurance. Through this foundation, we are helping to embed intelligence into public services, national platforms, and industries that shape everyday life.

In the UAE, that mission is already underway. Our Sovereign Public Cloud is powering the digital transformation of critical government entities, while the Signature Private Cloud extends those capabilities to the most sensitive and classified workloads. The AI Cloud and Compass platform are enabling the development of secure, high-performance AI solutions across sectors such as energy, healthcare, finance, and education.

Beyond the UAE, we are expanding this model internationally through partnerships that are strengthening sovereign AI capacity across regions. In France, we partnered with AMD to establish a state-of-the-art AI data centre in Grenoble, and joined forces with Oréus to provide in-country access to scalable compute capacity. In Italy, we partnered with iGenius to deploy Europe’s largest AI compute cluster powered by NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs, marking a major milestone in advancing sovereign AI infrastructure for European markets.

We also recently made OpenAI’s latest open-weight AI models available globally via our AI cloud platform, enabling enterprises, researchers, and developers to run models across leading silicon platforms with sovereign, scalable, and high-performance capabilities. And we entered into a strategic partnership with Northern Data Group to provide access to large-scale European sovereign AI Cloud capacity, supported by up to 10,000 GPUs from its Taiga Cloud business, to help meet growing demand for high-performance compute.

Together, these efforts demonstrate how we are translating the UAE’s AI ambitions into tangible progress, from the infrastructure that powers national platforms to the tools that enable AI adoption with security, scalability, and trust. By making sovereign, high-performance compute and advanced AI capabilities accessible to governments and enterprises alike, we are helping countries move from AI aspiration to AI realisation, ensuring that intelligence becomes a core utility for every nation’s growth, resilience, and global competitiveness.

Indeed, “Building AI-Native Nations” is not a slogan for us; it is a framework we are actively operationalising through Core42’s technologies, partnerships, and expertise.

The AI race is accelerating across regions and sectors. Where do you see the biggest opportunities for Core42’s growth and impact next?

AI is now the foundation of digital transformation, and the greatest opportunities lie where nations and enterprises are looking to scale it securely and responsibly. For Core42, this means growing in three key areas — expanding sovereign cloud capacity, scaling AI infrastructure, and enabling operational AI across sectors.

In the UAE, our priority is to deepen partnerships with federal entities and strategic industries to accelerate national AI adoption. We are working with government institutions and regulators to modernise core services, enhance data-driven decision-making, and embed intelligence into national platforms that improve efficiency and citizen experience.

Globally, we see increasing demand for the UAE’s model of sovereign AI infrastructure. We’re already working with partners across Europe to replicate this approach, helping countries build secure, high-performance AI ecosystems that balance innovation with sovereignty, compliance, and control. These partnerships aren’t just about technology deployment. Rather, we’re prioritising knowledge transfer and capability building to enable nations to develop their own AI capacity, strengthen digital resilience, and mirror the UAE’s success in building a globally competitive, AI-powered economy.

Looking ahead, the biggest opportunity lies in operationalising AI, moving from pilots to platforms that power economies, cities, and enterprises. With the combined strength of our AI Cloud, Sovereign Public Cloud and forthcoming Signature Private Cloud, as well as the Managed Services support we provide to our customers, Core42 is enabling this shift, helping nations and organisations turn AI ambition into measurable impact.

Read: Core42’s Mohammed Retmi on how sovereign cloud, AI are reshaping UAE’s digital economy