Altman tells ADIPEC opening AI can help energy industry, as Hall 13 AI Zone and Conference run

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told the opening of ADIPEC 2026 in Abu Dhabi that he is excited about AI's potential to help the energy industry, according to highlights published by the organisers.

The organisers said the Opening Ceremony set the stage for four days of discussions. They said Altman explored the growing relationship between AI, energy and economic growth, while H.E. Dr Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, UAE Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology and ADNOC Managing Director and Group CEO, highlighted energy security, investment and international partnerships.

In remarks published by the organisers, Altman said: “I am tremendously excited for AI to help and enable the energy industry, and I am even more excited to see what the world can do with the inspiration, ideas, output, and leverage that people can get out of AI, with abundant energy to make all these wonderful things happen.”

The Stratawire did not attend the session. This report draws on the organisers' highlights email and published background, each attributed below.

AI Conference and AI Zone

The organisers' email also pointed to the free-to-attend AI Conference and AI Zone in Hall 13. Participants listed by the organisers include NVIDIA, Dell, OpenAI, Presight, G42, DeepOcean, Siemens, Honeywell, AIQ, e&, Microsoft, Cognite, IBM and Inception42.

According to TradeArabia, syndicated by Zawya, the expanded AI Zone is co-hosted by AIQ. It highlights applications of artificial intelligence, robotics, automation and advanced analytics across energy operations.

Further detail from the organiser release

A separate ADIPEC organiser press release, distributed by PR Newswire on 2 November, said the ceremony featured a speech and interview with Altman. It said this brought a global technology perspective to discussions on AI, energy demand and infrastructure investment.

The release said Altman highlighted the growing interdependence between AI and energy. It said he argued that AI can help make energy systems more efficient, reliable and innovative, but that its rapid expansion will also require significantly more energy.

According to the same release, Altman said AI was increasingly used not just as a productivity tool but as a platform for scientific discovery and problem-solving. It said he saw potential to transform energy operations, materials development and system design.

The release also said Altman praised the UAE's leadership in AI adoption and described the ADNOC-G42-OpenAI partnership as a model for applying advanced AI to real-world industrial challenges.

The ADNOC partnership

ADNOC said in a statement on 2 November that it had announced a multi-year partnership with OpenAI and G42 at ADIPEC. It said this makes ADNOC the first energy company to deploy OpenAI's AI platform for connecting and coordinating frontier AI agents across complex business operations.

ADNOC said the agreement builds on its rollout of ChatGPT Enterprise to more than 40,000 employees. It described this as the largest enterprise deployment of ChatGPT in the Middle East and North Africa, with adoption exceeding 97%.

ADNOC added that the agreement is the latest milestone in its AI and robotics strategy, which it said already encompasses more than 200 AI applications and 70 robotics use cases deployed or under development.

The National reported that the Frontier deal is one of four agreements signed between Abu Dhabi-based entities and OpenAI, spanning the government, energy and investment sectors.

Infrastructure and demand context

The National also reported that a 1-gigawatt cluster is being developed by G42's Khazna Data Centres within the 5-gigawatts UAE-US AI Campus in Abu Dhabi, with OpenAI, Oracle, Nvidia, Cisco and SoftBank as partners. It said OpenAI stated at launch that the first 200 megawatts were expected to go live in 2026.

On wider power demand, Hydrocarbon Engineering, reporting the IEA's Energy and AI special report in April 2025, said global data centre electricity demand is projected to more than double by 2030 to around 945 TWh. It said AI will be the most significant driver, with demand from AI-optimised data centres projected to more than quadruple by 2030.