Policy at a Crossroads: Evaluating the US-UAE Partnership

This Capstone project assessed whether a major U.S. bank should expand its AI operations in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and determined the optimal operating model for such an expansion. The UAE has emerged as the principal U.S. commercial partner in the Middle East and the region’s central hub for AI investment as many peer institutions have already established regional operations there.

The team’s analysis was structured across three levels.  At the macro level, the Capstone team examined the three regulatory regimes the bank must satisfy: U.S. export controls, U.S. financial supervision, and the UAE’s data residency and AI frameworks. At the meso level, the team traced how peer banks have built positions in the market and identified the practices that produce results, while at the micro level, the team worked through the decisions a technology policy team confronts on individual use cases. A quantitative model complemented this work, assessing UAE electricity supply and demand through 2030 alongside benchmarks of innovation and governance.

The team’s recommendations were to: 1) align with UAE national priorities like We the UAE 2031 and the 2026 cashless target rather than pursuing transactional deals; 2) advise the Central Bank of the UAE, Emirates NBD, and other Emirati institutions on AI, compliance, and sovereign cloud; 3) base senior bankers in the UAE and open a regional headquarters in Abu Dhabi or Dubai’s financial free zones; and 4) finance UAE power generation, where the announced AI buildout is projected to outpace planned grid capacity by 2030.