THE DATA CENTRE INTERVIEW
Innovation City, the UAE’ s groundbreaking AI-powered free zone based in Ras Al Khaimah, has added a data centre to its digital infrastructure. The ecosystem licenses companies working in AI, Web3, gaming, robotics and healthtech, and now houses Siada, a sovereign AI facility built in partnership with IOPn that processes workloads under UAE jurisdiction.
Paul Dawalibi, CEO of Innovation City, has spent more than 25 years working across startups, venture capital, gaming and AI, and says the businesses arriving in Ras Al Khaimah have changed what they are asking of the free zone.
According to Paul, licensing speed and set-up times have given way to a procurement problem with a legal one attached – namely which jurisdiction will hold their training data and whose hardware their models will run on.
Where AI runs becomes a board decision The jurisdiction dynamic has moved data centre design into the boardroom and handed free zones in the Gulf a different pitch to make.
“ At Innovation City, we’ ve seen a fundamental shift in the questions companies ask us,” says Paul.“ A year ago, they wanted to know how quickly they could establish a business. Today, they ask where their AI will run. That single shift tells you everything about where the industry is heading.”
“The first AI race was about building the smartest models. The next one is about the infrastructure those models depend on”
Paul Dawalibi CEO Innovation City
For operators, that means sovereignty and governance are now specified alongside power density and uptime, and signed off further up the organisation than either.
“ The first AI race was about building the smartest models,” Paul says.“ The next one is about the infrastructure those models depend on. As organisations move from experimentation to enterprise-scale deployment, data sovereignty and governance have become board-level decisions. Not IT decisions. Board decisions.”
He elaborates:“ Data centres are no longer storage facilities – they are the foundation on which the AI economy gets built. And the deeper truth is this – where your AI runs determines who controls it. The jurisdictions that answer that question with clarity, sovereignty and trust will not just attract the next generation of AI companies. They will define the terms on which the AI economy operates.”
22 September 2026