#UAE #deals - Abu Dhabi-headquartered enterprise AI company EMB Global has been named an OpenAI Select Partner, making it one of the first companies appointed globally under OpenAI’s new Partner Network programme, launched in June. The partnership will see EMB Global combine OpenAI’s frontier models with its own proprietary CosmOS agent orchestration platform and Horizon observability layer to help enterprises and governments move AI projects from pilot testing into full production.
SO WHAT? - OpenAI has committed $150 million funding to its new Partner Network in an attempt to help it scale its technology across enterprise and government customers. Since its launch a few months ago, the AI company has appointed just a few dozen Select Partners globally. So, for EMB Global, the new status further validates its sovereign AI and agentic systems work with Fortune 500 clients and government bodies. For OpenAI the partnership provides additional expertise and platforms to develop customers across a region where data residency and regulatory compliance now shapes how AI gets deployed. It also reconfirms the UAE’s status as a strategic market for OpenAI.
KEY POINTS:
Abu Dhabi-based enterprise AI company EMB Global has been named an OpenAI Select Partner, one of the first partners appointed globally since OpenAI launched its Partner Network in June 2026.
OpenAI has committed $150 million to its Partner Network programme, which aims to train and certify 300,000 consultants by the end of 2026 and includes three partner tiers: Select, Advanced and Elite.
EMB Global specialises in agentic AI, sovereign AI and large-scale AI transformation, working with Fortune 500 companies and government organisations across the Middle East, Southeast Asia and the United States since its founding in 2018.
The company’s proprietary technology stack includes CosmOS, an AI agent orchestration platform, and Horizon, an observability layer, both designed to support secure and scalable deployment of AI systems within enterprise operations.
Recent EMB Global projects include agentifying the end-to-end workflows of a major government organisation, building AI-driven network intelligence tools for a global telecommunications company, and developing an intelligent retail management platform for one of the Middle East’s largest hypermarket groups.
The company says that the deployments have delivered up to 15% gains in process and bottom-line efficiency for clients, according to the company.
For government organisations and regulated industries, EMB Global also builds sovereign AI architectures addressing data residency, private infrastructure and model governance requirements.
The partnership will support EMB Global’s use of OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 model and ChatGPT Work product as it expands agentic and computer vision deployments for enterprise and government clients.
ZOOM OUT - OpenAI’s move to appoint Select Partners in the UAE builds on an already deep commitment by the AI company to the UAE. In May 2025, it was announced that the Emirates would host an OpenAI Stargate AI infrastructure cluster, the first location to be chosen outside the US. The development of the 1 gigawatt facility is being led by G42, in collaboration with Oracle, Nvidia and Cisco. The first 200 megawatt cluster is planned to go live this year. OpenAI has added UAE data residency for enterprise customers in November 2025, tripling its UAE user base over the prior year. UAE enterprise customers were offered inference residency from August 2026, making the UAE only the third market globally, after the US and Europe, where prompts and files are processed entirely on domestic GPUs. So, the appointment of EMB Global as one of OpenAI’s first Select Partners aligns with the US company’s strategic relationship with the country.
[Written and edited with the assistance of AI]
Source: EMB Global, OpenAI
Read more about OpenAI in the Middle East:
OpenAI now offers inference residency to UAE enterprises (Middle East AI News)
Qatar signs AI partnership with PwC and OpenAI (Middle East AI News)
OpenAI offers UAE data residency for enterprise customers (Middle East AI News)
Emirates partners with OpenAI for AI deployment (Middle East AI News)
Tech leaders unite to build Stargate UAE AI hub (Middle East AI News)