Dubai's Jebel Ali Port moved 146 electric internal terminal vehicles onto its yard by October 2025, ten times the fleet it ran a year earlier. In Abu Dhabi, AD Ports Group spent June 2026 switching on a group wide AI platform built to run across 20 separate business lines, from container terminals to economic zones, launched from a stage at the Digital District inside Zayed Port. Between them, DP World and AD Ports Group operate two of the busiest port complexes in the Middle East, and both are now treating artificial intelligence as core infrastructure rather than a side project.
This guide looks specifically at what is running inside UAE ports and maritime terminals: the automation built into Jebel Ali's yard, gate, and fleet operations, the semi-automated cranes and rapid growth at Khalifa Port, and the AI platform AD Ports Group just switched on across its wider network. It sits alongside our broader look at AI across UAE transport and logistics, which covers the country's autonomous trucking pilots and DP World's electric freight partnership with Einride in more depth, and it follows the same sector map used in our guide to AI use cases across UAE infrastructure.
Why Ports Sit at the Center of the UAE's AI Buildout
Jebel Ali Port is the largest seaport in the Middle East, and Khalifa Port has become one of the fastest growing container terminals in the Gulf, so whatever happens inside them affects trade flows well beyond the UAE. Ports are also unusually well suited to AI in a way many other infrastructure sectors are not: a container terminal is a closed, sensor dense, repeatable environment, which is exactly the kind of setting where machine learning and automation deliver measurable gains fastest. That is one reason ports and maritime logistics sit inside the priority sectors named in the UAE National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence 2031, alongside energy, construction, and government services. It is also why the two operators running those ports, DP World in Dubai and AD Ports Group in Abu Dhabi, have each made AI a named pillar of their own corporate strategy rather than treating it as a single department's project.
Jebel Ali: DP World's Automation and Electrification Push
DP World's home terminal spans 27 berths across four container terminals, backed by more than 100 quay cranes, 37 at Terminal 1, 32 at Terminal 2, 19 at Terminal 3, and 13 at Terminal 4, and the operator describes the facility as running fully automated yard operations supported by advanced scanning, weighing, and digital track and trace systems, according to DP World's own Jebel Ali Port page. Remotely operated quay cranes and automated gantry cranes and gates have been part of the terminal's operations for several years as part of Dubai's wider Smart City push, The National reported in 2020, when DP World's security subsidiary, World Security, put fully autonomous, remotely monitored surveillance boats into service at Jebel Ali, Mina Rashid, and Mina Al Hamriya to patrol the port day and night.
The more recent shift has been toward electrification paired with automation. In a press release dated October 14, 2025, DP World confirmed it had expanded its electric internal terminal vehicle fleet at Jebel Ali from 14 units in December 2024 to 146 by October 2025, a tenfold increase built from 35 diesel vehicles converted by DP World's own in-house engineering team, more than 100 new units sourced from global manufacturers, and 11 electric empty container handlers, all supported by a new rapid charging station network. DP World said the move cuts greenhouse gas emissions from the fleet by more than 10 percent, equivalent to taking 2,255 cars off the road annually, and frames it as one of the single largest electric port vehicle deployments in the Middle East. None of this fleet runs itself yet, but an electrified, sensor equipped vehicle base is the direct prerequisite for the kind of AI dispatched, increasingly autonomous terminal fleet DP World is already piloting elsewhere in its network.
Khalifa Port and AD Ports Group's New AI Intelligence Headquarters
Abu Dhabi's flagship container facility, Khalifa Port, was the first semi-automated container port in the Gulf when it opened, and it has kept expanding since. Khalifa Port climbed to 39th position in Lloyd's List's Top 100 Ports for 2025, up from 95th in 2019, a climb AD Ports Group attributes partly to consistent throughput growth and the integration of advanced digital and cargo handling technologies. The same October 22, 2025 announcement confirmed the group's total container capacity had reached 11.8 million TEU as of the second quarter of 2025, 9.6 million of which sits at Khalifa Port, where first half 2025 throughput rose 21 percent year on year to 3.62 million TEU. Khalifa Port is also the only Gulf region port hosting terminals run by three of the world's top five shipping lines, COSCO Shipping Ports, CMA CGM, and Mediterranean Shipping Company, according to the same source. That is real, physical trade volume, not a pilot project, and it is the base AD Ports Group is now layering AI on top of.
That layer arrived in two moves during 2026. In May, AD Ports Group and telecom operator e& announced they had completed an AI-ready terrestrial digital backbone extending more than 1,000 kilometers across the group's Abu Dhabi assets, built to stream high volume sensor, video, and IoT data with millisecond level inference and layered with existing low earth orbit satellite links for resilience. AD Ports Group chief executive Captain Mohamed Juma Al Shamisi called it proof that the future of global trade is intelligent and predictive, while e& Group chief executive Masood M. Sharif Mahmood said the network was built because advanced connectivity is now essential to compete. Then, on June 23, 2026, from the Digital District inside Zayed Port, AD Ports Group launched its AI powered Intelligence Headquarters, known as IHQ, a platform designed to deploy thousands of digital workers across 20 business workstreams spanning ports, logistics, maritime services, economic cities, and digital operations, with early demonstrations covering port optimization, vessel orchestration, software development, and talent acquisition. The launch was timed to mark 20 years of digital investment at the group and was framed as directly aligned with the UAE National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence 2031. It followed a marker AD Ports Group had already set in 2025, when it received a Guinness World Record for deploying the largest number of AI agents within a single logistics facility.
What This Means for UAE Logistics and Infrastructure Firms
Neither DP World nor AD Ports Group built these systems entirely in-house, and that is the opening for firms working around, not inside, the two port operators.
- Data infrastructure and connectivity providers, since AD Ports Group built a dedicated, 1,000 plus kilometer high capacity network with e& before any machine learning could run on top of it, the same sequencing smaller logistics sites will need to follow rather than skip.
- Digital twin, sensor integration, and asset register specialists, the same skill set covered in our guide to AI asset management in UAE infrastructure, since terminal automation depends on the same structured asset and sensor data as any other AI driven maintenance program.
- Electrification and charging infrastructure suppliers and technicians, given DP World's tenfold electric fleet expansion at Jebel Ali and the in-house conversion and charging network that scale required.
- Firms that track named partnerships rather than cold outreach, since both operators built their AI platforms through specific technology partners, e& for connectivity and global automation vendors for terminal equipment, rather than open tenders.
Where These Programs Run Into Trouble
The most visible AI story at Jebel Ali, remote cranes and automated gates, is not actually new. It has been running for years as part of Dubai's Smart City program. The genuinely new investment in 2025 and 2026 has been in electrification and, at AD Ports Group, in the data backbone and orchestration layer needed to run AI across an entire portfolio rather than a single terminal. A firm that assumes ports still need more robotic hardware is behind where the real spending is going.
The second friction point is that Dubai and Abu Dhabi run separate systems. DP World's terminal technology and AD Ports Group's IHQ platform were built independently, for different port networks, under different ownership. A technology or logistics firm hoping to serve both emirates should expect to integrate with two distinct systems and two distinct procurement processes, not one unified UAE port AI standard.
The Bottom Line
UAE ports moved from automated equipment to AI platforms during 2025 and 2026. DP World tenfolded its electric terminal fleet at Jebel Ali, and AD Ports Group built a dedicated data backbone with e& before switching on an AI platform, IHQ, spanning 20 business lines at Khalifa Port and beyond. Neither move was built alone, and that is where the near-term opportunity sits for UAE logistics, technology, and infrastructure firms: in the connectivity, digital twin, electrification, and named-partner work both operators are relying on to make their AI ambitions real.
Research sources used
- AD Ports Group: AD Ports Group Launches AI-Powered Intelligence Headquarters IHQ (June 23, 2026)
- AD Ports Group: AD Ports Group and e& Deliver AI-Ready Terrestrial Digital Backbone Across Logistics Infrastructure (May 21, 2026)
- DP World: Jebel Ali Port Expands Electric Fleet 10x, Slashing Emissions (October 14, 2025)
- DP World: Jebel Ali Port Operations
- The National: DP World Launches Autonomous Security Boats at UAE Ports (2020)
- Abu Dhabi Ports: Khalifa Port Rises to 39th Position in Lloyd's List Top 100 Ports (October 22, 2025)