ADNOC Taps OpenAI and G42 to Build Decision Intelligence Across Energy Chain

ADNOC will deploy AI agents across its operations under a multi-year partnership with OpenAI and G42, announced at ADIPEC 2026 on Monday. The Abu Dhabi National Oil Company said the work targets sharper decision-making, operational efficiency and better coordination along the energy value chain.

The scope runs from production through processing, refining, logistics, sales and trading. The interconnected agents are meant to link operational and commercial decisions across ADNOC's businesses, weighing the commercial consequences of an operational choice and flagging market opportunities as they appear.

Under the agreement the three companies will jointly build and deploy a customized decision intelligence system on OpenAI Frontier. It combines OpenAI's advanced models with ADNOC's proprietary industrial data and operational know-how, and runs on G42's sovereign AI infrastructure in the UAE. Human experts keep oversight of consequential decisions.

Sam Altman, OpenAI's chief executive, described the arrangement as first-of-its-kind, joining frontier AI, sovereign infrastructure and industry expertise. It would help ADNOC "move faster, operate more efficiently and make better decisions across the energy value chain," he said.

move faster, operate more efficiently and make better decisions across the energy value chain,

Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, crown prince of Abu Dhabi and chairman of the Abu Dhabi Executive Council, witnessed the signing.

Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, the UAE's minister of industry and advanced technology and ADNOC's managing director and group CEO, said the company is taking a major step toward connecting intelligence across its entire business. The partnership pairs world-leading AI with decades of industrial expertise, he said, with the aim of improving decisions, unlocking greater value and strengthening energy security.

The deal extends work already under way. ADNOC has more than 200 AI applications in its portfolio and 70 robotics use cases deployed or in development. ChatGPT Enterprise has gone to more than 40,000 employees, which ADNOC calls the largest enterprise rollout of the tool in the Middle East and North Africa, with adoption above 97%. ADNOC and OpenAI will jointly develop further AI solutions for the company's operations.

Speaking at the conference in Abu Dhabi, Al Jaber said energy security should be judged on reliable delivery as well as production capacity, after a year of disruptions that exposed weaknesses in global supply chains. The choices made now, he said, will shape the energy landscape a decade out. He urged the industry to apply the lessons, build capacity and form partnerships that hold when it matters, citing the OpenAI and G42 tie-up as an example of technology and industrial collaboration strengthening operational resilience.

"The world has asked what energy can do for AI," he said. "We will now find out what AI can do for energy."

The sovereign infrastructure clause carries as much weight as the models. Gulf producers are buying frontier AI while insisting the compute sits inside the country, which keeps industrial data under local control. For OpenAI, a refiner's trading floor is a different test than a chatbot: decisions there carry immediate financial and physical consequences, and the agents are being built to trace them.

Separately, ADNOC Gas ranks sixth on a 2026 list of the region's 100 most valuable companies. Al Jaber ranks second on a 2026 ranking of the region's top 100 chief executives. Ibrahim Al-Zu'bi, ADNOC Group chief sustainability and ESG officer, places third in the oil and gas category of a 2026 sustainability leaders list. Altman's estimated net worth stood at $3.1 billion as of November 2, 2026.