India-UAE ties moving from co-investment to co-innovation and AI: UAE special envoy

The strategic partnership between India and the United Arab Emirates is shifting from a focus on co-investment to a deeper agenda of co-innovation, with artificial intelligence and advanced computing emerging as central pillars. During a visit to Delhi this week, Badr Jafar, the UAE's special envoy for business and philanthropy and CEO of Crescent Enterprises, said the two countries are exploring collaboration in high-performance computing, modern data centres and AI-enabled services while institutional ties and trade ambitions continue to accelerate.

"Together, we are exploring cooperation in advanced computing capacity, data centres and AI-enabled services-positioning the UAE-India corridor not merely as a consumer of AI, but as a co-creator of its next phase," Jafar told The Economic Times.

Context and recent moves

Jafar highlighted concrete signals of the UAE’s early commitment to AI and digital infrastructure: the appointment of the world's first minister of state for AI in 2017 and the establishment of the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence in 2019, the world's first AI-dedicated university. The UAE expects AI to contribute roughly 14% to its gross domestic product by 2030.

On investment, Jafar noted that CE‑Invests, the strategic investments arm of Crescent Enterprises, announced in November plans to deploy AED 1 billion (about $272 million) over three years into high‑growth markets across India, Southeast Asia and the GCC. Those corporate moves sit alongside large-scale bilateral flows: UAE investors have deployed more than $22 billion in India across infrastructure, healthcare, financial services and renewables, while Indian investments in the UAE exceed $16 billion as companies build manufacturing facilities, relocate production lines and set up regional headquarters.

Trade ties have advanced rapidly since the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement was signed in 2022. "When the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement was signed in 2022, it set a target of $100 billion in bilateral trade by 2030. That milestone was reached last year, five years ahead of schedule. At last month's presidential meeting, our leaders doubled the ambition to $200 billion by 2032. Few economic corridors globally are moving at that pace, and with that level of institutional alignment," Jafar said. Non‑oil trade alone grew nearly 20% last year to reach $65 billion.

Outlook: sectors and next steps

• AI and advanced computing: joint development of data centres, AI‑enabled services and computing capacity to make the UAE‑India corridor a co‑creator of AI innovation.
• Advanced manufacturing and low‑carbon industries: cooperation on clean energy and grid‑scale storage to support decarbonisation and industrial resilience.
• Digital infrastructure and fintech rails: leveraging India’s digital public infrastructure and engineering scale to expand regional fintech and trade platforms.
• Healthcare and biopharma supply chains: accelerating healthcare innovation and cross‑border production networks.
• Smart logistics and trade platforms: integrating logistics and digital trade facilitation to support faster commerce across the corridor.

Those ambitions, backed by corporate capital commitments and a rapidly rising trade baseline, position the India‑UAE partnership to move beyond capital flows and into collaborative technology development — with AI set to be a defining element of the next phase.