A few years ago, on a humid summer night in Dubai, someone at an edtech networking event whispered to me, “Did you hear the UAE is building a university just for AI?” I laughed it off—assuming it was some ambitious pilot program that would quietly disappear. Today, that offhand comment feels prophetic.
MBZUAI—short for Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence—is exactly what it claims to be: the world’s first graduate-level university entirely dedicated to AI. No ivy-covered walls, no centuries of academic tradition. Just a blank canvas and a future-oriented mission.
Since welcoming its first graduate students in 2021, MBZUAI has moved at hyperspeed. From 52 faculty and 200 students, it now boasts over 560 students, researchers, and staff, with 13 graduate programs already running. In August 2025, its first-ever undergraduate cohort will arrive. All students receive full scholarships—including housing and living stipends—creating an environment where education is the primary focus, not tuition bills.
A South African PhD candidate I met, who previously studied at the University of Edinburgh, told me, “There’s no legacy pressure here. We’re not told how AI must be studied—we're shaping that as we go.” That spirit of reinvention is palpable across the campus.
Timothy Baldwin, the university’s provost and a globally respected AI researcher, once called MBZUAI’s launch “a luxurious blank slate.” There are no entrenched traditions to resist curriculum changes, no bureaucratic speed bumps, and a whole lot of generous government backing. As he puts it: “It’s a rare chance to rethink what AI education should look like, not just replicate what’s already out there.”
What’s most surprising? Over 30% of MBZUAI students are women—a rare statistic in AI, where female representation often struggles to hit double digits. Students come from all over the globe: from Brazil to Kazakhstan, Serbia to China, Indonesia to the U.S. They aren’t all coding prodigies either. The university actively seeks out musicians, athletes, and creatives—students who show passion and purpose, not just perfect SAT scores.
One new student from Brazil used to be a playwright. Now she’s learning to build AI tools that support creative writing. “To me, AI isn’t just cold logic—it’s a new language of storytelling,” she said during an online forum I attended.
And MBZUAI isn’t just producing talent—it’s becoming a player on the global AI stage. The university has launched multiple open-source large language models, including JAIS, which is Arabic-focused, and K2, an English-language model. It’s opened engineering offices in Paris and the San Francisco Bay Area. It’s also leading efforts to build language models for underserved regions in Asia and Africa—part of a larger goal to “democratize” AI access globally.
Behind it all is the UAE’s national AI strategy, which aims to make the country a global leader by 2031. Stanford’s Global AI Vibrancy Index already ranks the UAE fifth in the world—just behind the U.S., China, the UK, and India. Baldwin says you can “see the university’s fingerprints everywhere” in this national transformation.
Industry has taken notice. IBM recently opened a collaboration hub on MBZUAI’s campus. Microsoft has partnered with local AI firms to launch innovation centers there. Faculty are not just publishing research—they’re launching startups. One example: LibrAI, a company working on safer, more culturally-aligned generative AI tools, particularly for use in the Global South.
Eric Xing, the university’s president and a former Carnegie Mellon professor, co-founded GenBio AI, a startup working on bio-foundation models and even developing a digital organism called AIDO. It sounds like science fiction—but it’s happening right now, in Abu Dhabi.
The university also runs executive education and custom AI programs for governments and corporations. Baldwin told me thousands have already been trained through these tracks.
Still, the real pivot is happening this year, with the launch of its undergraduate program. “We always wanted to do undergrad—it was just a matter of when,” Baldwin says. “We knew we needed a strong graduate foundation first.”
Unlike many traditional CS degrees, MBZUAI’s undergrad curriculum is grounded in real-world needs. Employers said even grads from top global programs lacked practical readiness. So MBZUAI responded with two focused tracks: a Bachelor of Science in AI—Engineering, and a Bachelor of Science in AI—Business. From year one, students dive into real AI projects, with internships, mentorships, and collaborative placements embedded directly into the four-year experience.
Students won’t just learn how to build models—they’ll learn how to navigate the world those models are reshaping. Courses will span computer science, humanities, economics, and ethics. “We want students who can think beyond code,” says Baldwin.
Industry connections are core to this model. Engineers from major tech companies teach at MBZUAI. Students spend a full academic year in industry or research settings, with one-on-one mentorship built into the process. It’s a long way from the lecture halls I remember.
Of course, MBZUAI isn’t trying to out-Google DeepMind. No one is building a 5,000-person team like the one behind Gemini. But the university is one of the few institutions actively training people to build large, commercially viable language models. And that makes a difference.
MBZUAI’s growth strategy is bold. In 2024 alone, it launched five new departments—including computational biology, robotics, human-computer interaction, and statistics. By next year, five more are expected. New academic centers focus on public health, decision science, and applied AI for non-specialists.
This expansion marks a shift from “pure AI” to a wider ecosystem—where AI meets biology, economics, and public policy. The new School of Life Sciences, for example, includes research in precision medicine and systems epidemiology. “When AI researchers and life scientists share the same hallway, amazing things happen,” Baldwin said.
That’s the kind of quiet revolution MBZUAI represents. Not just teaching AI—but embedding it where it matters most.
In five years, the university expects to house 400 faculty, 1,000 postdocs and engineers, 1,000 PhDs, and 1,000 undergraduates. That’s not a research center—that’s a global ecosystem.
And it all started with a blank page.