Nvidia's Earth-2 deal marks milestone in UAE-US AI co-operation

Abu Dhabi's G42 deal with Nvidia to use its Earth-2 platform is a crucial partnership signifying the UAE's progress in advanced AI and its development of geospatial technology.

The UAE's deal with America's main and most advanced manufacturer of semiconductors was agreed to a few days before President Sheikh Mohamed's first presidential visit to Washington on Monday. Sheikh Mohamed is expected to meet US President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris as well as American technology and business leaders during his visit.

Deals such as those between G42 and Nvidia, mark a milestone in the two countries' advanced AI co-operation and mutual goals.

What is Earth-2?

Nvidia’s Earth-2 platform aims to address climate change that is causing unprecedented damage to the global economy with floods, drought and extreme weather like rising temperatures in many places across the globe.

The platform, unveiled in March, uses the power of AI, physical simulation and computer graphics that can make climate and weather predictions accurately.

The platform enables users to create high-resolution simulations ranging from the global atmosphere conditions and local cloud cover to typhoons and turbulence. It can predict extreme weather weeks in advance. Governments, people and companies specialised in the energy sector can benefit from it.

Its AI model, CorrDiff, generates 12.5 times higher resolution images than current numerical models and is 3,000 times more energy efficient. Images are generated 1,000 times faster than the present models in predicting weather changes.

CorrDiff uses the power of generative learning to “address the challenge of predicting fine-scale details of extreme weather phenomena with unprecedented accuracy and efficiency”, according to Nvidia.

Taiwan is currently using these models to forecast typhoon landfalls with more precision. Airflow around buildings and streets can also be predicted using the latest advanced technology to minimise damage on the streets.

It expects to predict phenomena such as “downwash,” where strong winds funnel down to street level, causing damage and affecting pedestrians.

In the energy sector, the platform can support engineers with planning and operating carbon capture and storage, ensuring safe operation and long-term storage and reducing the amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere.

Government agencies can also benefit from CorrDiff in disaster preparedness and planning response efforts to mitigate damage. It also supports the financial services sector to help companies make informed decisions regarding risk assessment and asset management.

Nvidia's Earth-2 is an “excellent example of a digital twin that fuses AI physics simulations and observed data to help countries and companies see the future and respond to the impact of extreme weather,” the company said.

The platform also offers a suite of powerful climate tech tools for training and inference of AI weather models, including Nvidia Modulus and Earth2Studio.

Advancing AI partnership

The UAE’s goal to become an AI chip manufacturing centre and solutions provider is encouraged by its years-long US partnerships with Microsoft, Google, Meta and more.

This is being driven by the UAE's minister of state for artificial intelligence, Omar Al Olama, who considers this co-operation essential for growth.

“The only way this will work is if we’re able to build sustainable and long-term partnerships with countries like the United States where we are able to build cutting-edge chips,” said Mr Olama in May.

Its latest deal last week with Nvidia signalled the US's continuing support of the Gulf country’s ambitions.

This takes place before Sheikh Mohamed visits Washington this week where meeting with leading business and technology executives is on the agenda.

UAE-US deals in the advanced AI space began appearing more regularly from 2022 with G42’s partnership with Amazon Web Services to create advanced AI healthcare services among others.

Injazat, a G42 digital transformation company acquired last year, partnered with Texas-based Oracle in May to create a dedicated infrastructure in the region for the UAE federal government and Abu Dhabi’s local government to access.

Since then, the public announcement of deals between US companies has been emerging, likely encouraged by OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman’s comments expressing that the UAE could serve as the world’s “regulatory sandbox” to test AI.

That statement was followed up in April by a $1.5 billion dollar investment by Microsoft into the country’s leading AI firm, G42.

The expanded partnership will also include the creation of a $1 billion fund to support developers aimed at enhancing the Middle East's technology talent pool.

In the six months after that, the UAE saw the achievement of major milestones. This includes the announcement to merge G42’s Bayanat, Abu Dhabi’s geospatial data and products service provider, with Mubadala-owned satellite services company Yahsat to form a unified Space42.

G42’s partnership with California-based AI training company Cerebras Systems yielded the July announcement of what they’re naming the largest global network of AI supercomputers, known as Condor Galaxy. The nine cloud-connected supercomputers would train and enhance the usage of LLMs to create better AI solution services and products.

In mid-August, the UAE launched its first Synthetic Aperture Radar satellite into the Earth’s lower orbit with the aid of SpaceX at the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

This month, it also launched its Hindi large language model, which is expected to enhance the growth of India’s artificial intelligence industry and enhance G42's global expansion.

Last week, American multinational investors BlackRock and Microsoft committed to launching a $30 billion AI investment fund to invest in critical infrastructure such as data centres needed to power deep learning and large-scale data processing needed for greater computational power.