Sourced records of Chinese AI deployments across the Global South and the Middle East

Alibaba Cloud opened its first Dubai data centre in 2016 and launched a second Dubai DC on 14 Oct 2025 (GITEX Global 2025) explicitly to accelerate AI-powered digitalization, adding the Qwen LLM and Platform for AI; local AI deployments were announced with Wio Bank, ACCUMED (healthcare) and The Game Company.

On 23 Jul 2019 SenseTime and the Abu Dhabi Investment Office (ADIO) announced an agreement under which SenseTime would establish its EMEA regional R&D headquarters ('AI Centre of Excellence') in Abu Dhabi, targeting ~600 direct tech jobs over five years across healthcare, remote sensing and education. No source located to date confirms the centre was built or entered operation; SenseTime's own release describes an MOU signing ceremony and says establishment was 'expected to start in 2019'.

iFlytek established a Dubai office with a local R&D/ecosystem team and debuted (GITEX 2025) its Spark/Xinghuo X1 LLM (customised for Arabic dialects, running on domestic chips), AI translation earbuds, AINOTE 2 and smart-space tools; it targets education, healthcare, enterprise and government.

The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) committed US$65M as a cornerstone investor (3.35m shares) in MiniMax's Hong Kong IPO (~US$492M raise, ~US$6.5B valuation, priced end-Dec 2025); Alibaba was also a cornerstone investor. MiniMax builds multimodal text/audio/image/video models.

Pony.ai and Dubai's RTA signed a strategic partnership (May 2025); Pony secured a Dubai testing permit (Sep 2025) and began driverless robotaxi trials (Apr 2026), targeting commercial service in 2026.

WeRide runs commercial robotaxi service in Abu Dhabi with Uber and Tawasul Transport under an ITC permit; commercial service began Dec 2024 and reached L4 fully driverless operation on Yas Island in Nov 2025, expanding to downtown Abu Dhabi in Feb 2026 with a safety operator still on board in the downtown zone. WeRide states a fleet of 200+ robotaxis and a target of ≥1,200 across the Middle East by 2027 (company figures). Also live in Dubai.

Baidu's Apollo Go signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Dubai's RTA (28 Mar 2025) to deploy 100 RT6 robotaxis by end-2025 scaling to ≥1,000 by 2028 — Apollo Go's first fleet outside mainland China/Hong Kong.

DiDi Autonomous Driving joined Abu Dhabi's SAVI cluster and signed a strategic partnership with the Abu Dhabi Investment Office (Nov 2025), covering AV deployment, AI talent and ecosystem building; robotaxi testing planned to begin in 2026 using its R2 model (co-developed with GAC AION).

Abu Dhabi/HK-based Infini Capital extended a credit line of up to US$1B to UBTech and raised its stake toward ~5%, alongside a JV to build a regional HQ, R&D centre and humanoid-robot 'super-factory' in the Middle East (Sep 2025).

UBTech signed a US$362.4M deal (12 Nov 2019) with Royal Strategic Partners (Abu Dhabi Capital Group) to build AI teaching labs in 1,310 schools across all seven emirates over four years plus university course design — billed as the world's largest AI-education deal, aligned to the UAE 2031 AI Strategy.

Abu Dhabi's CYVN Holdings took ~20.1% of NIO via US$2.2B (Dec 2023) plus earlier US$738.5M and a US$350M secondary purchase (~US$3.3B total), becoming NIO's largest shareholder; NIO cites its proprietary autonomous-driving / ADaaS technology.

A wholly-owned subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) was a named foreign backer in Megvii's US$750M Series D (8 May 2019), which lifted the facial-recognition firm's valuation to ~US$4B ahead of a planned IPO.

Abu Dhabi's G42, via its 42X Fund, bought a ByteDance stake reported at ~US$100M at a US$220B valuation (Mar 2023).

Abu Dhabi's Mubadala Investment Company (via Aerospace Holding Company LLC) subscribed US$100M of XPeng's ~US$400M Aug 2020 pre-IPO round, alongside existing investor the Qatar Investment Authority; at the time XPeng's autonomous-driving stack was XPILOT.

Terminus set up its international HQ in Dubai, supplied 152 AI robots to Expo 2020 Dubai as an Official Premier Partner, and earlier secured >US$100M from a Middle-Eastern investor (2017); AIoT/'AI CITY' partners include Nakheel, Emaar, Majid Al Futtaim and Expo City Dubai.

Airdoc's AI retinal-imaging system went live at Medcare Hospital Al Safa (Dubai) in May 2024; it screens 35 eye diseases and 9 chronic conditions (hypertension, anaemia, diabetes) plus cardiovascular risk from a fundus image in ~3 minutes (>95% accuracy).

Under the UAE's NextGen FDI initiative, Beijing autonomous-trucking firm TRUNK will set up a UAE regional HQ (targeted 2026) for sales, operations and autonomous-truck manufacturing, aiming to deliver 2,000 self-driving trucks to Middle East & Africa customers over five years (100–150 jobs).

Huawei jointly released IntelligentRAN in the Middle East with e&/Etisalat (UAE), du (UAE), stc (Saudi) and Zain (regional) on 13 Jun 2022, embedding a Mobile Intelligence Engine for intelligent identification, fault detection and autonomous-network capability into 5G.

In 2019, Huawei Cloud launched a local hyperscale cloud data center in South Africa. By 2024, it had established three data center availability zones/locations in Johannesburg, providing cloud and AI computing services for government, finance, education, telecom, media, e-commerce, and other industries. The company regards growing AI adoption as an important driver of cloud spending by South African enterprises.

Huawei Cloud has expanded its local cloud business in Kenya since around 2020. In 2025, it worked with Kenya's Ministry of Information, Communications and the Digital Economy to advance the Kenya AI & Cloud Pioneer Initiative, promoting AI and cloud services across government, finance, telecom, media, e-commerce, and other industries. Huawei Cloud Stack 8.5 can deploy 120+ cloud services and AI capabilities locally.