ADNOC today announced a landmark multi-year partnership with OpenAI and G42 at ADIPEC, becoming the first energy company to deploy OpenAI’s advanced artificial intelligence (AI) platform for connecting and coordination frontier AI agents across complex business operations. Where ADNOC’s existing AI, including ENERGYai, builds deep intelligence about its reservoirs, assets and operations, OpenAI Frontier will connect that intelligence across the business, so operational, capital and commercial decisions can be made together rather than one after another.
His Highness Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Chairman of the Abu Dhabi Executive Council, witnessed the signing of the partnership agreement.
His Excellency Dr. Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, UAE Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology and ADNOC Managing Director and Group CEO, said: “The next frontier of AI is not simply doing things faster. It is making possible what was previously beyond reach. Through this landmark partnership with OpenAI and G42, ADNOC is taking a major step towards connecting intelligence across our entire business, combining world-leading AI with decades of industrial expertise to make better decisions, unlock greater value and strengthen energy security.
“As the first energy company to deploy OpenAI Frontier, we are demonstrating how frontier AI can move beyond individual applications to reshape the performance of an entire industry. This is industrial AI at scale, pioneered here in Abu Dhabi, and it will help define the future of energy.”
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, said: “More capable AI can help us tackle some of the world’s hardest problems – particularly around energy. By combining frontier AI, sovereign infrastructure and industry expertise, this first-of-its-kind partnership will help ADNOC move faster, operate more efficiently and make better decisions across the energy value chain. Together, we’re shaping the future of AI-enabled energy.”
His Excellency Mansoor Al Mansoori, CEO, G42 International, said: “You should not have to use AI to benefit from it. Some of the greatest value will come from improving the systems humanity depend on, and energy is fundamental to every economy. The UAE is building an AI native nation with a global purpose to export intelligence responsibly as we have long exported energy. Building on years of collaboration with ADNOC through AIQ, this partnership with OpenAI’s frontier capabilities will further that ambition to reality. What we build here should strengthen the energy system the world relies on, with benefits that reach people far beyond our borders.”
The partnership will initially focus on two high-value applications. The first will transform field master planning from a sequence of separate subsurface, facilities and economic studies into a single, integrated decision. Building on ENERGYai’s reservoir-level intelligence, OpenAI’s advanced reasoning models will integrate decades of data across thousands of wells, multiple stacked reservoirs and hundreds of surface facilities together with capital, cost and commercial considerations, to prepare and optimize full-field development master plans at unprecedented speed, scale and depth. The step change is not only speed but scope: rather than optimizing each reservoir or facility on its own, the plan is optimized for the whole field at once.
The second application will make ADNOC the first energy company in the world to use this technology to value every barrel while it is still in the ground. It will connect intelligence across ADNOC’s integrated value chain, from production and processing to refining, logistics, sales and trading, where decisions today often rely on different systems, data and priorities. Interconnected AI agents will continuously forecast crude oil supply, demand, prices and margins, predict their impacts before they occur, and weigh the commercial and operational impact of every decision as one integrated process. By solving instantly complex workflows from the reservoirs to the customers, this application will give decision-makers insights that are ready to act on and will unlock the highest value of every barrel ADNOC produces, processes and sells.
The partners will jointly develop and deploy a bespoke decision intelligence capability using OpenAI Frontier, combining OpenAI’s latest generation frontier models with ADNOC’s proprietary industrial data and expertise, deployed on G42’s sovereign AI infrastructure in the UAE and with human experts retaining oversight of consequential decisions.
Beyond the initial applications, the partnership will create a shared foundation of industrial knowledge that preserves institutional expertise and accelerates future AI applications across ADNOC’s operations. It will also strengthen ADNOC’s cyber defence through OpenAI’s Daybreak Blue initiative, helping security teams identify vulnerabilities and protect critical energy infrastructure. All solutions will operate within ADNOC’s oversight, ensuring that proprietary data and critical infrastructure remain protected.
As part of the partnership, ADNOC and OpenAI will co-develop advanced AI solutions and equip ADNOC’s workforce with the skills to deploy and use them effectively. This builds on ADNOC’s rollout of ChatGPT Enterprise to more than 40,000 employees, the largest enterprise deployment of ChatGPT in the Middle East and North Africa, with adoption exceeding 97%.
The agreement is the latest milestone in ADNOC’s AI and robotics strategy, which already encompasses more than 200 AI applications and 70 robotics use cases deployed or under development.
