Executives at G42, the Abu Dhabi artificial intelligence group, have held exploratory talks over the potential sale of a majority stake to American companies, as the firm races to guarantee access to high-tech chips beyond next year, people familiar with the matter said. A transaction of that shape would mark a radical reshaping of a company overseen by an influential member of the Abu Dhabi royal family and set up about eight years ago to lead the emirate's first big foray into technology.

The discussions follow an earlier round of exploratory talks with potential investors over raising several billion dollars, which would have placed G42 alongside other state-linked Abu Dhabi firms in drawing on external financing. Its investors already include Mubadala Investment Company, the American private equity firm Silver Lake and Microsoft, which took a 1.5 billion dollar minority stake in 2024 and holds a board seat. No final decisions have been taken on the structure or size of any deal, the people said, and the company has declined to comment.

The strategic logic runs through Washington. Under a 2024 understanding, G42 shed its holdings in Chinese businesses and agreed to invest in American data centre capacity in return for access to Nvidia chips and other advanced US technology. Ownership by American investors would give the Abu Dhabi group a more durable route to the hardware its ambitions depend on. G42 sits at the centre of the UAE-US AI Campus being built with American technology partners, whose first phase, the 30 billion dollar Stargate UAE compute cluster, began construction last year.