Emirates NBD said on 19 October 2026 that it will deploy OpenAI’s GPT models using in-country inference infrastructure in the UAE. Inference is the stage at which a trained model answers requests, so this processing would take place inside the country.
The bank said this will make it the first bank in the Middle East and North Africa to deploy OpenAI’s models in this way, and tied the arrangement to data residency, privacy and operational resilience requirements. It listed planned uses including customer engagement on digital channels, risk and compliance analysis, financial-crime controls, and tools to help staff with knowledge-heavy work. The announcement described the infrastructure as OpenAI’s “sovereign AI infrastructure” but did not say who owns or runs the data centres, give a start date or disclose financial terms.
Miguel Rio-Tinto, the bank’s Group Chief Digital and Information Officer, said AI “is not an experiment for us, it is a core capability”.
Why it matters: banks handle sensitive personal and financial data. Keeping the processing in the UAE is how the bank says it will meet its data residency and privacy obligations while using these tools.
What to watch: when customers first see these services, which decisions stay with human staff, and whether other Gulf banks make similar arrangements.