UAE to produce 60 trillion AI tokens to become world's 'factory of intelligence'

The UAE is planning to produce 60 trillion artificial intelligence tokens through its vast Stargate data centre, as it bids to become the global centre for the technology, the country's Minister of State for AI, Digital Economy and Remote Work Applications has said.

The figure would be equivalent to about 60 per cent of global production and is a key part of the Emirates' ambitions to be the “world's factory of intelligence”, Omar Al Olama told the Milken Middle East and Africa Summit in Abu Dhabi on Thursday.

Tokens in AI are the basic unit to calculate the length of text and can include punctuation marks and spaces, and vary from language to language. The bigger the token count, the more comprehensive the generated results are. Data such as text, images, audio clips and videos are translated into tokens is the process known as tokenisation.

AI factories are a new class of data centre designed to accelerate workloads that efficiently crunch through tokens, converting them from the language of AI to the currency of AI, which is intelligence, according to chip giant Nvidia.

“The currency of the future is going to be tokens, that can be used and transformed into insights or intelligence that will help in decision making, improve the quality of life and improve productivity,” Mr Al Olama said.

“We're trying to reach the capacity of being able to [develop] a token factory that produces 60 trillion tokens.”

He did not provide a time frame for reaching the goal. “So many fundamentals need to check out.” he said.

Stargate, which has a planned capacity of 1 gigawatt, is expected to operate on a 200-megawatt capacity in 2026. It is part of a larger 5GW campus in Abu Dhabi.

“No one is certain about anything, but the investment is there. As long as our partners work with us and we're able to get what we need at the right time, then we are certain,” Mr Al Olama said.