Foreign AI Firm With Alleged China Ties Strikes Deal With US Tech Giant

OpenAI is joining an Abu Dhabi oil deal alongside an Emirati tech firm that House Republicans once scrutinized over ties to China.

The Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) announced Monday a multi-year deal with OpenAI and G42, an agreement the company says makes it the first energy firm anywhere to adopt OpenAI’s Frontier platform.

“OpenAI Frontier will be deployed on G42’s sovereign AI infrastructure in the UAE,” the ADNOC Media Team said in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Former Republican Wisconsin Rep. Mike Gallagher, who chaired the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party at the time, asked Biden-era Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo in a January 2024 letter to weigh adding G42 to the department’s trade blacklist, known as the Entity List.

“Following my letter, I’m glad to see G42 reduce its investment exposure to Chinese companies,” Gallagher said in a Feb. 11, 2024, statement after G42 said it had sold its stakes in Chinese firms.

Republican Michigan Rep. John Moolenaar, who succeeded Gallagher as the select committee’s chairman, joined Texas Rep. Michael McCaul, a fellow Republican then leading the House Foreign Affairs Committee, in a July 2024 letter asking for an intelligence assessment of G42’s ties to the Chinese Communist Party.

G42 and its affiliates have active ties to entities linked to the People’s Republic of China, “including ones working to evade U.S. sanctions and export controls,” the lawmakers wrote to then-National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan.

Asked about the ADNOC agreement, a spokesperson for the select committee pointed the DCNF to Moolenaar’s past concerns about G42.

A Commerce Department rule that took effect in July cleared G42 to receive advanced computing chips without a license. G42 must become an American company by April 6, 2027, or seek separate approval to keep that status, according to the rule.