OpenAI’s Altman to stop in Abu Dhabi for MGX fundraising talks – report

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman plans to visit the United Arab Emirates this week to discuss raising funds with Abu Dhabi investment group MGX, two sources with knowledge of the matter said.

Altman’s Abu Dhabi stop comes as the ChatGPT maker looks to raise about $40bn to fuel its model development and ambitious infrastructure plan Stargate at a time when US AI companies are facing a new challenge from cheaper Chinese alternative DeepSeek.

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MGX took part in OpenAI’s last funding round of $6.6bn, which closed in October. With a growing presence in the US AI scene, it has invested in companies such as xAI and Databricks. MGX was not immediately available for comment.

The talks with Abu Dhabi’s MGX will follow Altman’s whirlwind tour of Asia, during which a partnership with Japan’s SoftBank for AI services was announced on Monday.

SoftBank is in talks to lead a funding round of up to $40 billion in OpenAI at a valuation of $300bn, including the new funds, in what could be a record single funding round for a private company, sources have said.

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US President Donald Trump last month unveiled a joint venture dubbed Stargate involving three principal equity backers OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle ORCL.N, in which MGX is also participating.

The Stargate partners have promised to spend $100 billion to build the servers providing computing muscle for AI, ramping up to $500bn over four years.

Altman visited India on Wednesday, where he met IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw and discussed the country’s plan for creating a low-cost AI ecosystem.

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Altman’s OpenAI, which is part-owned by Microsoft, released ChatGPT in late 2022 and reached over 300 million weekly active users two years later. But China’s DeepSeek emergence this month showed companies a cheaper alternative to access AI technology at a fraction of the cost.

AI was top of the agenda when UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan visited Washington in December.

Abu Dhabi’s AI push is led by the state-backed G42 and MGX, in which the $330bn wealth fund Mubadala is a partner.