Mubadala Partners With Together AI, Which Opens Abu Dhabi Office

Summary

• Mubadala and Together AI will pursue AI and infrastructure investment opportunities across the UAE.
• Mubadala put $100 million into Together AI's Series C round announced July 1, 2026.
• The deal ties a US compute platform to Abu Dhabi's sovereign AI ambitions.

The latest

Together AI will open an Abu Dhabi office serving regional developers with inference and research capabilities, under a partnership with Mubadala Investment Company announced September 29, 2026. The two sides said they will identify and pursue artificial intelligence and infrastructure investment opportunities across the UAE. Mubadala, which manages a $385 billion portfolio across six continents, framed the work as building sovereign AI capability along the value chain.

Details

• The structure: According to Mubadala's press release, the partnership covers identifying and pursuing AI and infrastructure investment opportunities across the UAE. The announcement did not disclose a financial value for the partnership itself, a target number of projects, or a timeline for the investment activity it is meant to generate.
• The prior stake: Mubadala said it had already invested $100 million in Together AI's Series C financing round, announced July 1, 2026. The September partnership builds on that position, moving the relationship from a passive investment into joint deal sourcing inside the Emirates.
• The Abu Dhabi office: As part of the agreement, Together AI will establish an office in Abu Dhabi to provide inference and research capabilities to developers in the region. Mubadala did not name an opening date, a headcount, or the hardware the office would operate.
• The company: Together AI was founded in 2022 and is headquartered in San Francisco. It runs a full-stack AI platform covering inference, model optimization and accelerated compute for open and custom AI models, positioning it in the compute layer rather than the consumer application layer.
• The Mubadala view: Ali Eid AlMheiri of Mubadala said the collaboration with Together AI supports the UAE's ambition by strengthening a critical part of the AI ecosystem. Mubadala tied the partnership to the UAE National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence 2031 and to positioning the country as an international AI innovation hub.
• The Together AI view: Chief Executive Vipul Ved Prakash said demand for open-source AI is outpacing the compute available to serve it, and described Mubadala as "a partner that helps us do it at speed." The framing casts Abu Dhabi capital as a route to faster capacity expansion.
• The scale: Mubadala manages a $385 billion portfolio invested across six continents. The sovereign fund did not indicate how much of that portfolio is allocated to artificial intelligence, or whether the UAE-focused opportunities will be funded from an existing mandate or a new one.
• The stated goal: Both parties said the collaboration aims to develop sovereign AI capabilities across the value chain — from compute through model deployment — rather than a single project. No specific facility, data center, or partner institution was named in the announcement.

Background

The UAE National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence 2031 sets out government targets for adopting AI across the economy. Mubadala cited it directly as the policy frame for the Together AI partnership.

Between the lines

The two stated motives fit together. Together AI's chief executive describes a compute shortage constraining open-source AI, while Mubadala describes strengthening a critical part of the ecosystem — inference and accelerated compute, the layer Together AI operates. Placing that capability in an Abu Dhabi office, rather than serving the region remotely, is what converts a $100 million equity stake into local infrastructure aligned with the 2031 strategy.

What's next

Watch for the Abu Dhabi office's opening date and staffing, the first investments identified under the partnership, and whether Mubadala discloses a dedicated AI allocation within its $385 billion portfolio.

Source: Mubadala Investment Company