A single circular wafer carrying about four trillion transistors was unveiled Thursday as a new benchmark for AI hardware during a session at the World Governments Summit.
The device, created through a partnership between Abu Dhabi’s G42 and US-based Cerebras Systems, was shown on stage by G42 chief executive Peng Xiao. Lt. Gen. Sheikh Saif bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the UAE’s deputy prime minister and interior minister, introduced the presentation, framing it as a step forward in the country’s artificial intelligence plans.
Xiao held up the wafer and described the scale. “There are more than four trillion transistors on this one chip,” he said, contrasting it with today’s largest GPUs, which he said top out at just over 100 billion transistors because they are limited to a much smaller die area. Using an entire wafer, he said, allows roughly a 40-fold jump in transistor count.
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The chip is intended for deployment at G42’s planned 5-gigawatt AI campus in Abu Dhabi, a project previously described by Xiao as the largest AI factory initiative outside the United States. He said multiple units like this will be installed to power what he called an AI production environment.
Al Nahyan said the development carries significant weight for the UAE’s technology ambitions and stated that the country’s approach could enable 40% of the global population to access AI. He also said the UAE treats data for nations and companies with legal protections comparable to those afforded to embassies, describing trust as central to AI progress.
Explaining the technical need, Xiao said advanced AI requires enormous computing capacity. He compared energy to the sustenance for AI systems and the chip to the central mechanism that converts that energy into intelligence.
Xiao also recounted the pace of work at the Abu Dhabi site, saying the land chosen last June had been an empty desert. A recent image, he said, shows construction advancing toward the first 200 megawatts of state-of-the-art AI data center capacity. The broader campus plan was announced last May during a visit by President Donald Trump.