BRICS’ Emergence as a New Global Hub for Artificial Intelligence

In the field of investment, the New Development Bank (NDB) plays a pivotal role in advancing BRICS cooperation in artificial intelligence. In 2025, the bank established the Digital Sovereignty Fund with a budget of USD 5 billion to support the development of artificial intelligence research parks, national data centers, semiconductor infrastructure, and advanced chip manufacturing.

Notable projects supported by this fund include the UAE’s Artificial Intelligence Cloud Cluster and the Artificial Intelligence Research and Education Zone in Addis Ababa. The United Arab Emirates has also made substantial investments in the company G42, securing a significant share of regional computing infrastructure and positioning itself as a key regional player in the AI ecosystem.

The BRICS bloc is actively pursuing the creation of a fully integrated value chain encompassing infrastructure, semiconductor chips, software, and cloud services. This ecosystem is designed and developed independently, with the strategic objective of reducing reliance on American and European technologies.

Along this path, China—through SMIC, the country’s largest semiconductor and advanced chip manufacturer—and India—via the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC)—have placed the development of 7-nanometer technologies on their strategic agendas. Iran, for its part, has launched a National Quantum Computing Program aimed at building next-generation computational capabilities.

Overall, BRICS is shaping a new architecture for artificial intelligence that not only serves as an alternative to the Western technological ecosystem but is also designed to redefine the rules of global competition, data sovereignty, knowledge production, and digital power structures.