Alternatives to Stargate

When you’d compare alternatives to Stargate

Stargate is among the most consequential AI compute commitments ever announced, and its relevance to Saudi Arabia’s $77 billion AI buildout is both direct and competitive. The OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle joint venture has committed $500 billion to US AI infrastructure development, with an initial $100 billion deployment phase already underway. At that scale, Stargate is not simply a US infrastructure project — it is a gravitational force in the global AI compute ecosystem that affects every other AI infrastructure program, including Saudi Arabia’s, by competing for the same GPU supply, the same talent, and the same hyperscaler partnerships.

Stargate’s Saudi Compute Score of 7.2 in the GCC Competitors sector reflects this dual nature. As a competitor to Saudi Arabia’s AI ambitions, Stargate represents the US alternative that global AI infrastructure investors and technology companies might prefer over Saudi-hosted compute. Its score measures how it compares to other GCC competitor entities from the perspective of an analyst trying to understand which non-Saudi entities are most strategically significant to the Saudi compute buildout — either as competitive threats, as benchmarks, or as potential partnership targets.

Comparing Stargate to alternatives in the GCC Competitors sector — Mubadala at 8.3, EDGE at 7.8, and UAE AI Office at 7.8 — surfaces an important geographic distinction. Stargate is a US-domiciled project, while Mubadala, EDGE, and UAE AI Office are all Abu Dhabi entities. For Saudi Arabia’s AI compute buildout, Abu Dhabi-based competitors are more proximate threats than US-based ones: they are competing for the same regional AI talent, the same GCC enterprise customer base, and many of the same global technology partnerships. Stargate’s competitive relevance to Saudi Arabia is primarily through its claim on global GPU supply and its potential to attract AI workloads that might otherwise flow to Saudi-hosted infrastructure.

The audience for a Stargate-versus-alternatives analysis is typically: global AI infrastructure investors deciding between US and Middle East compute exposure, technology companies evaluating where to host AI workloads for Middle East-facing applications, or sovereign fund analysts mapping the competitive landscape for Saudi Arabia’s AI ambitions.

How to read the alternative rankings

The Saudi Compute Score assesses entities across seven dimensions, with Capacity (18%), Capital (16%), and Silicon Access (16%) forming the dominant cluster. For US and GCC competitor entities, the SCS is applied from the perspective of their strategic significance to Saudi Arabia’s compute ecosystem — either as competitors that draw resources away from the Saudi buildout, or as potential partners and benchmarks.

Stargate’s SCS profile in the GCC Competitors sector is shaped by several structural factors. Its Capacity score is exceptionally high given its $500 billion commitment and the scale of planned US data center deployment. Its Capital score is also high — SoftBank, Oracle, and OpenAI together represent substantial financial resources, with additional capital from Abu Dhabi’s MGX as a named founding partner. Its Silicon Access score benefits from NVIDIA’s deep involvement in the project’s planning and the US government’s alignment with Stargate as a strategic AI infrastructure initiative.

Where Stargate scores lower in the GCC context is on Sovereignty (it is US-domiciled and foreign-owned from Saudi Arabia’s perspective), and on the regional AI infrastructure dimensions that favor entities physically present and operationally engaged in the GCC. The Mubadala, EDGE, and UAE AI Office scores reflect their direct presence in the GCC market and their active deployment of AI infrastructure in Abu Dhabi — they are building the regional competitor to Saudi Arabia’s AI ambitions from within the same geographic and geopolitical context.

Geopolitical Resilience is a complex dimension for Stargate. Its US domicile makes it the beneficiary of US government AI policy support, which is a form of geopolitical resilience. But it also means that from Saudi Arabia’s perspective, Stargate’s infrastructure is subject to US technology governance, export controls, and potential policy shifts — exactly the risks that Saudi Arabia’s sovereign AI program is designed to hedge against.

When the alternatives become preferable

When GCC-proximate AI infrastructure is required. Mubadala, EDGE, and UAE AI Office are all physically present in the GCC and actively building AI infrastructure in Abu Dhabi. For technology companies and investors whose primary interest is in the GCC AI compute market — not the US market — these entities are more directly relevant competitors and potential partners than Stargate. Mubadala’s investments in AI infrastructure within and beyond the GCC, EDGE’s defense and sovereign AI programs, and the UAE AI Office’s regulatory and investment coordination role all operate at a geography that is directly competitive with Saudi Arabia’s buildout.

When data sovereignty within the region matters. From the perspective of a GCC enterprise or government seeking AI infrastructure, the choice between Saudi-hosted compute and UAE-hosted compute is a genuine one. Stargate’s US-domiciled infrastructure is largely irrelevant to this decision — the data sovereignty implications of hosting sensitive GCC data in US data centers are prohibitive for many customers. Mubadala’s AI infrastructure investments in Abu Dhabi, by contrast, are directly competing for the customers that Saudi Arabia’s AI infrastructure program is trying to serve.

When investment co-participation in the GCC AI buildout is the goal. Mubadala is the most active sovereign AI infrastructure investor in the GCC and has co-invested in AI infrastructure projects spanning the US, Europe, and the Middle East. For global asset managers seeking exposure to the GCC AI buildout, Mubadala is a more accessible and regionally-grounded entry point than Stargate, which is primarily a US infrastructure story with GCC capital participation.

When defense and sovereign AI applications are central. EDGE Group is Abu Dhabi’s defense technology company and is building sovereign AI capabilities for defense and national security applications that have direct implications for regional AI compute architecture. Saudi Arabia’s equivalent defense AI programs create both competition with and lessons from EDGE’s development trajectory. The EDGE comparison is most relevant when evaluating the military AI dimension of the GCC compute competition.

When regulatory and ecosystem development is the focus. The UAE AI Office, under the mandate of UAE’s national AI strategy, is building the regulatory frameworks, talent programs, and ecosystem infrastructure that makes Abu Dhabi a credible AI hub. Saudi Arabia’s SDAIA plays a similar role. Comparing Stargate to the UAE AI Office highlights that the GCC AI compute competition is partly about institutional infrastructure — who is building the policy, talent, and regulatory environment that AI companies prefer to operate within.

The competitive tier breakdown

Mubadala (SCS 8.3) is the highest-ranked entity in the GCC Competitors sector and represents Saudi Arabia’s most formidable regional competitor for AI infrastructure investment and AI compute positioning. Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund has made AI infrastructure one of its primary investment themes, with significant commitments to US AI companies (including a reported $1 billion+ commitment to OpenAI itself, making Mubadala a Stargate adjacency), European AI infrastructure, and domestic Abu Dhabi compute development. Mubadala’s advantage in the SCS reflects its combination of sovereign capital scale (the fund manages over $300 billion in assets), AI infrastructure investment velocity, and its role as the primary channel through which Abu Dhabi competes with Saudi Arabia for global AI company partnerships. The comparison between Mubadala and Stargate illustrates the layered nature of the US-GCC AI capital relationship: Mubadala is simultaneously an investor in US AI infrastructure (including Stargate-adjacent companies) and a builder of competing regional infrastructure. For Saudi Arabia’s AI strategy, Mubadala is the more immediately proximate competitive concern.

EDGE Group (SCS 7.8) is Abu Dhabi’s defense technology conglomerate and the UAE’s primary developer of sovereign AI for defense applications. EDGE’s portfolio includes autonomous systems, electronic warfare, cybersecurity, and the AI compute infrastructure that supports these applications. Its comparison to Stargate is oblique — Stargate is a commercial AI infrastructure project, while EDGE is a defense-oriented sovereign technology company — but both represent significant AI compute commitments that draw on the same global ecosystem of GPU supply, AI talent, and technology partnerships. In the GCC competitive context, EDGE’s defense AI programs represent a class of sovereign AI capability that Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 AI program must match to achieve genuine AI sovereignty, and EDGE’s development trajectory is a benchmark for Saudi Arabia’s own defense AI ambitions.

UAE AI Office (SCS 7.8) coordinates the UAE’s national AI strategy and investment programs. Its role in the GCC AI competition is primarily institutional — shaping the regulatory environment, attracting AI talent, and coordinating investment — but institutional infrastructure is a genuine competitive asset. The UAE’s early establishment of a national AI strategy and its regulatory clarity around AI applications has made Abu Dhabi a preferred jurisdiction for AI companies establishing Middle East operations. Saudi Arabia’s SDAIA and the new AI governance frameworks being built around Vision 2030 are in part a response to the competitive pressure created by the UAE AI Office’s institutional lead.

The rest of the ranked field

The remaining alternatives clarify what Stargate is by contrast with what it is not.

Qatar Investment Authority (SCS 7.8) is the sovereign wealth path not taken: with approximately $475 billion under management and an LNG-anchored fiscal base, QIA has the capital to participate in Stargate-scale projects but has instead pursued selective AI infrastructure exposure through portfolio positions. For investors, QIA represents GCC AI exposure without concentration in either the Abu Dhabi cluster or the US buildout — a diversification instrument rather than an infrastructure bet.

MGX (SCS 7.2) shares Stargate’s composite score and sits inside it: the Abu Dhabi AI investment vehicle is a named founding investor in the Stargate joint venture. The comparison between them is really a choice of exposure — Stargate is the asset, MGX is the allocator holding a piece of it alongside a broader AI portfolio. MGX’s presence in Stargate’s capital table is also the clearest evidence that the project’s “US infrastructure” framing understates its Gulf capital participation.

Core42 (SCS 7.1) is the operational contrast case. G42’s cloud and sovereign compute subsidiary — a major Cerebras customer operating one of the GCC’s largest GPU clusters — represents the hyperscaler-aligned model that the UAE chose: G42 restructured around Microsoft’s equity investment and the Stargate program rather than building a fully vertically integrated sovereign stack. Where Humain owns its data centers, contracts its own chips, and hosts its own models, Core42 rides hyperscaler stacks with Stargate alignment.

Bahrain Cloud (SCS 7.1) and Oman Compute (SCS 6.1) bracket the bottom of the sector. Bahrain’s AWS Middle East region was the GCC’s pre-Saudi cloud anchor and demonstrates the regulatory-first, hyperscaler-led alternative to megaproject compute; Oman’s emerging sovereign compute initiative shows the same ambitions at a scale that neither Stargate nor the Saudi program registers as competition.

Stargate versus the Saudi program: complementary more than competitive

The most analytically productive framing of Stargate for Saudi-focused readers is structural comparison rather than horse race. The two programs differ in kind. Stargate is commercially structured with national-strategic orientation — Oracle and OpenAI as anchors, project finance behind it; the Saudi program is national-strategic-led with a commercial overlay, wholly owned by a single sovereign principal. Stargate’s most durable advantage is frontier silicon access: primary access to NVIDIA’s most advanced parts through OpenAI’s, Oracle’s, and Microsoft’s commercial relationships, while the Saudi program operates under the BIS framework that permits substantial volumes — the November 2025 approval of 35,000 GB300 systems — subject to end-user verification and deployment conditions. Saudi Arabia’s most durable advantages are the inverse: sovereign jurisdiction, which qualifies it for government and regulated workloads across the Gulf, Africa, and South Asia that Stargate is structurally locked out of, and energy economics, where dedicated ACWA Power purchase agreements and NEOM-anchored renewables target power costs in the $0.02-0.03 per kWh range that US grid-interconnected sites cannot match.

Even the capital gap is smaller than the headlines suggest: Stargate’s $500 billion is a five-to-ten-year commitment while Saudi Arabia’s $77 billion is concentrated in the tighter 2025-2030 window, so the realized capex run rates converge. And the most likely evolution is explicitly cooperative: a pattern in which a frontier model lab anchors its US deployment on Stargate while running a sovereign-tier instance on Humain infrastructure for Gulf and MENA workloads — an arrangement being actively negotiated by multiple frontier labs and the most plausible 2027-2028 shape of the relationship. The Chinese sovereign AI program, operating at a scale comparable to or exceeding Stargate’s headline capital, is the third variable that pushes both programs toward alignment rather than rivalry.

Stargate’s structural position

Stargate’s SCS of 7.2 in the GCC Competitors sector captures its position as a significant but primarily US-centric AI infrastructure project whose competitive relevance to Saudi Arabia operates primarily through capital and GPU supply competition rather than direct market competition. Its $500 billion commitment is the largest single AI infrastructure announcement in history, and its execution will shape the global availability of AI compute for years.

From Saudi Arabia’s perspective, Stargate’s most consequential impact is on GPU supply chains. As a US government-aligned project with scale that commands priority allocation from NVIDIA and other chip vendors, Stargate’s demand absorbs GPU capacity that Saudi Arabia’s AI infrastructure program might otherwise access. Saudi Arabia’s mitigation strategy — building direct government-level relationships with NVIDIA, diversifying into non-US GPU suppliers, and deploying capital at a scale that commands attention — reflects a clear-eyed assessment of this competitive dynamic.

Stargate’s potential as a partnership vehicle for Saudi AI ambitions is also real. OpenAI’s relationship with Saudi Arabia — including the reported AI agreement signed during the 2025 state visit — suggests that the boundary between Stargate as a competitor and Stargate as a partner is actively being negotiated at the highest levels of both governments. The signals to watch are which frontier labs commit to sovereign-tier deployments on Humain infrastructure, how Stargate’s US power-grid interconnection risk affects its delivery cadence, and whether GPU allocation priorities tighten or loosen as both programs scale simultaneously.