Aleria expands sovereign AI infrastructure with 16,000 Nvidia chips across US and UAE

Abu Dhabi's Aleria is deploying 16,000 Nvidia Blackwell Ultra AI chips across the US and UAE

Abu Dhabi-based sovereign AI infrastructure provider Aleria is expanding its artificial intelligence capabilities across the United States and the UAE through partnerships with California technology companies Nvidia and DDN, as demand accelerates for secure, nationally controlled AI computing power.

The expansion will see Aleria deploy up to 16,000 Nvidia Blackwell Ultra graphics processing units in the United States, alongside 28 racks of next-generation Nvidia DGX Vera Rubin NVL72 systems in the UAE. The deployment represents one of the first regional installations of the advanced Vera Rubin platform and builds on an existing partnership between Aleria and Nvidia announced in October 2025.

Developed within International Holding Company, one of the UAE's largest conglomerates chaired by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed, Deputy Ruler of Abu Dhabi, Aleria has positioned itself as a provider of sovereign AI infrastructure that allows nations to develop artificial intelligence capabilities while retaining full control over sensitive data within their jurisdictions.

Advanced computing at national scale

The infrastructure, built on Nvidia's accelerated computing technology and DDN's high-performance storage architecture, is already operational in both countries. The company said the deployment serves government agencies, national enterprises and operators of critical infrastructure requiring strict data residency and regulatory compliance.

The Blackwell Ultra GPU delivers 15 petaflops of dense FP4 compute with 288GB of HBM3e memory and 8TB/s bandwidth, representing a 50 percent increase in memory capacity over the B200 model. However, the advanced chips require liquid cooling, 800-gigabit networking, and power densities that most existing facilities cannot support, necessitating purpose-built data centres.

The US deployment will initially include 8,640 Nvidia Grace Blackwell Ultra GPUs before scaling to the full 16,000 units, supported by a 25-megawatt data centre designed specifically for secure AI workloads.

In the UAE, Aleria is installing the DGX Vera Rubin NVL72, a turnkey rack-scale solution that unifies 72 Nvidia Rubin GPUs and 36 Nvidia Vera CPUs through sixth-generation NVLink technology. Each rack delivers 3.6 exaflops of NVFP4 inference compute and 2.5 exaflops of training compute, enabling what the companies describe as gigascale AI capabilities.

Sovereign AI infrastructure model

Sovereign AI refers to the ability of a country or organization to build, run and govern AI systems within its own borders or jurisdictional control, maintaining authority over training data, models, infrastructure and interactions while ensuring data residency and regulatory compliance.

Rather than providing standalone computing hardware, Aleria offers an integrated AI platform spanning data management, cloud orchestration, enterprise applications and AI services operating entirely within national jurisdictions. The company serves sectors including government, healthcare, financial services, energy, utilities and telecommunications, and has partnered with e& UAE to extend AI solutions to small and medium-sized businesses.

Chief executive Eric Leandri said the company entered the market with proven, operational infrastructure rather than promises.

We came with working infrastructure,

he said, adding that deploying Blackwell Ultra systems in the US and DGX Vera Rubin technology in the UAE represented

the next chapter of something already proven

.

Technology partnerships

Marc Domenech, Nvidia's vice-president for Enterprise in the META and CIS region, said sovereign AI infrastructure gives nations the ability to manage their most valuable digital assets.

Aleria's Nvidia-powered sovereign AI factories provide the region with efficient, full-stack computing for the AI industrial revolution,

he said.

DDN, the world's largest private data storage company, powers 70 percent of the top 500 supercomputers globally and provides storage for hyperscale deployments including Elon Musk's 100,000-GPU xAI Colossus supercomputer. The company received a $300 million investment from Blackstone in January 2025 at a $5 billion valuation to accelerate its enterprise AI infrastructure capabilities.

Ankur Arora, DDN's senior regional director for the Middle East and Africa, said the partnership delivers the performance and resilience required by organisations that cannot compromise on security, reliability or data sovereignty.

The expansion comes as governments worldwide invest in sovereign AI infrastructure to ensure sensitive data remains within national borders while supporting rapid adoption of artificial intelligence across public services and strategic industries. Aleria said its dual-market deployment strengthens AI capacity in both the United States and the UAE while supporting high-skilled technology jobs and enabling governments to scale AI systems they fully own and control.