The Gulf’s AI buildout, currently anchored by the Stargate UAE facility and Saudi Arabia’s Humain, will consume energy at a scale that solar and gas cannot reliably sustain. Nuclear power is already operational at the UAE’s Barakah facility and is becoming imminent in Saudi Arabia, where it emerges as an indispensable enabler of the region’s digital ambitions, giving rise to an intricate dynamic of energy economics, vendor geopolitics and nonproliferation that will shape the nuclear-AI nexus in the years to come.
