US artificial intelligence company Scale AI, valued at close to $29 billion, announced on Monday that it has opened an office at the Dubai International Financial Centre, located within the Dubai AI Campus. The announcement came on the sidelines of the Dubai AI Festival.
Founded in 2016 and employing more than 1,000 people, Scale AI specialises in AI infrastructure, organising and labelling high-quality training data used to build large language models. Its client roster includes Meta, Cisco, Instacart, Nvidia, OpenAI, Microsoft, and the US Air Force.
Trevor Thompson, the company's global managing director, said at the opening that the new facility represents "a long-term commitment" to the region, adding that the goal is to help "UAE institutions build AI they can trust."
The announcement coincided with Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed approving a new target for the Dubai AI Campus: attracting more than 1,000 AI companies and creating over 5,000 specialised jobs by 2030. The campus already hosts more than 500 companies, which together have raised over Dh1 billion in private equity and venture capital funding.
The arrival of a company of Scale AI's scale, with a client list drawn from the top tier of global technology firms, is being read as a sign that Dubai's push to become a regional AI hub — alongside more established centres in the industry — is gaining real traction rather than remaining aspirational.