Over the past week, US President Trump and AI industry leaders gathered in the Middle East, with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s activities drawing particular attention.

In early May this year, Altman proposed a global version of the Stargate program called “OpenAI for Countries,” aiming to partner with governments worldwide to build data centers that provide customized AI models and related services tailored to local needs.

Various signs suggest that the first implementation of this global initiative might be in the United Arab Emirates.

One key reason for this aggressive push is the clearly divergent cultural requirements. AI language models developed by Silicon Valley giants primarily use English data. Even when these models can read and write Arabic, their thinking logic and worldview remain dominated by Western perspectives. DeepSeek has also demonstrated that forced alignment to avoid sensitive terms like “Tiananmen” can actually make it trivial for users to detect such restrictions.

Japan’s Sakana AI offers an approach worth considering for the UAE. This company trained its proprietary model using texts from the Edo period, starting with the intellectual foundations of the Yamato people. Their model not only masters Japanese but also learns the Bushido spirit, truly reflecting the nation’s cultural identity. For Arab countries, cultural alignment is even more crucial given the vast differences in values and worldviews compared to English and Mandarin-speaking worlds.

As customized AI model demands emerge across various countries, this trend benefits OpenAI as well. Previously focused on general-purpose models and reliant on Microsoft for computing power, OpenAI has seen its lead diminish as new models continuously emerge. In fact, its biggest competitor, Google, with capabilities in both software and hardware, offers lower per-unit computing costs.

Currently, OpenAI’s main advantage lies in brand loyalty. However, competitors are actively investing to achieve the same computational results at significantly lower costs. As AI becomes more integrated into daily life, whether brand loyalty can withstand cost considerations remains to be seen.

Consequently, OpenAI is actively positioning itself to convert brand recognition into actual stickiness. Their strategy no longer depends on specific cloud providers but focuses on creating customized AI models and data centers based on each country’s industrial, cultural, and computing needs.

As AI giants face transformation challenges and become more willing to invest in customization, Taiwan can use this opportunity to reconsider its positioning. Taiwan should learn from Hugging Face and Mistral’s collaboration with various French sectors, combining a vibrant open-source software ecosystem with hardware innovation capabilities. This approach would cultivate talent for fine-tuning AI and integrating software with hardware, creating customized models for various industries and implementing them in manufacturing and service sectors.

By taking the lead in AI integration, Taiwan can not only secure a larger share in the global AI industry chain but also enable various industries to gain competitive advantages and seize the opportunities presented by this AI transformation.