The Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) has appointed a new Board of Trustees, including AMD's chief executive, Lisa Su, and leaders from some of Abu Dhabi's most influential AI and investment entities. Khaldoon Khalifa Al Mubarak, chief executive officer and managing director of Mubadala Investment Company (which controls AI firm G42 and contract chipmaker GlobalFoundries), now chairs the board, which has expanded to nine members, reports MiddleEastNews.
The new Board of Trustees includes business, high-technology, and academic leaders. It also contains trustees with stronger ties to Abu Dhabi's executive and investment leadership, signaling a shift towards deeper integration with the emirate's economic and technological initiatives.
The restructuring marks the departure of key figures involved since the university's formal establishment in 2019 and the incoming of new people, such as Lisa Su and Khaldoon Khalifa Al Mubarak. In addition, the new board includes:
- Peng Xiao (chief executive of G42, a major UAE-based AI company)
- Daniela Rus (director of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL))
- Eric Xing (an American computer scientist specializing in machine learning, computational biology, and statistical methodology, one of the founders of MBZUAI)
- Martin Edelman (a lawyer specializing in real estate and corporate mergers and acquisitions transactions)
- Jassem Mohamed Bu Ataba Al Zaabi (the Chairman of the Department of Finance – Abu Dhabi)
- Saif Saeed Ghobash (Secretary General of the Abu Dhabi Executive Council)
- Rima Al Mokarrab Al Muhairi (Executive Director of the Strategic Affairs Unit of the Executive Affairs Authority (EAA) and the chairman of Tamkeen).
Lisa Su, CEO of AMD, is the most noticeable addition to the board, whose influence in the global semiconductor industry is well recognized. She led AMD's transformation from an underdog CPU developer into a leading supplier of CPUs for client and data center computers. Her appointment certainly raises MBZUAI's global visibility and strengthens its connection with the semiconductor and AI hardware industries.
For Su, serving on the same board with the head of G42 and Abu Dhabi politicians potentially means finding additional markets for the company's AI hardware — Instinct MI GPUs — that yet have to gain traction in the industry and compete for head-to-head against Nvidia's Hopper and Blackwell GPUs.
The MBZUAI board restructuring ensures the university remains a key player in Abu Dhabi's long-term vision for AI-driven economic growth while maintaining strong ties to global technology advancements.
The emirate recently committed $3.54 billion to integrating AI into government systems, reinforcing its focus on digital transformation. Additionally, MGX — Abu Dhabi's $100 billion AI investment fund — shares four board members with MBZUAI (Khaldoon Khalifa Al Mubarak, Peng Xiao, Martin Edelman, and Jassem Mohamed Bu Ataba Al Zaabi), further linking the university to the region's AI industry.
