The Dubai lender will use GPT models hosted inside the country for customer engagement, risk, compliance and staff productivity.
Dubai: Emirates NBD is set to become the first bank in the Middle East and North Africa to run OpenAI's GPT models on infrastructure based inside the UAE. The bank and OpenAI announced the enterprise collaboration on 19 October.
Why in-country AI matters for banks
Banks in the UAE operate under strict rules on security, governance and compliance. Running AI models on local infrastructure, known as in-country inference, allows lenders to use advanced AI at scale while still meeting expectations on data residency, privacy and operational resilience.
Where Emirates NBD will use the models
The bank plans to deploy the technology in four main areas:
- Customer engagement across its digital channels
- Risk and compliance analytics, including risk monitoring and financial crime controls
- Automation of knowledge-intensive workflows
- Employee productivity
Emirates NBD will also connect the models to its internal systems, APIs and enterprise data. It expects this to speed up the development of digital services, allow deeper personalisation for customers and improve engineering and operational productivity.
"A core capability," says the bank
Miguel Rio-Tinto, Group Chief Digital and Information Officer at Emirates NBD, said the bank is building AI into how it operates rather than running side experiments. In his words, "AI is not an experiment for us, it is a core capability." He added that the approach lets the bank move quickly while keeping governance, security and regulatory standards high.
Supporting the UAE's AI ambitions
The deployment backs the country's push to build world-class AI infrastructure and speed up responsible adoption in strategic sectors. It fits with the UAE National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence 2031 and reflects the growing availability of sovereign AI capabilities, which let organisations use advanced models while complying with local rules.
OpenAI's view
Farouk El Hamzawi, Head of Enterprise at OpenAI MENA, described the project as a benchmark for how financial institutions can adopt AI securely and responsibly at scale. OpenAI will provide its models, tools and UAE-based inference to help the bank meet regulatory requirements, and both sides plan to deepen the partnership to raise productivity, drive innovation and improve customer experience.
