CNME Editor Mark Forker sat down with Mohammed Retmi, Vice President Sovereign Public Cloud, at Core42, to learn more about the company’s role in the UAE’s AI and cloud future, enabling regulated industries to innovate securely, and delivering sovereign digital infrastructure built for scale.
Mohammed Retmi has enjoyed a hugely decorated and distinguished career to date in the ICT industry.
Throughout the course of his 25-year career, Retmi has demonstrated the ability to consistently build high-performing teams, and as a result of that leadership he is highly regarded and respected by industry peers both in Europe and the Middle East.
Retmi has worked in France, Switzerland and the UAE, and spent a large part of his career with telecommunications behemoth Orange Business Services.
It was during his time at Orange Business Services, that he cultivated his reputation as a prominent ICT leader who possessed both the strategic vision and technical nous to drive teams forward to solve complex business challenges.
In April 2023, he joined Core42, and exactly 12 months later he was promoted to the position of Vice President Sovereign Public Cloud.
He began our conversation by providing more context on what exactly the role Core42 plays in the overall structure of the G42 organization.
“At Core42, it is important to understand how we fit into the broader vision of G42. G42 is building what we call the Intelligence Grid, which can be compared to the electric grid but for AI. It is about making intelligence accessible, sovereign and on demand across sectors and borders. Every company within G42 plays a role in that architecture. Khazna builds the AI‑grade data centers that anchor the physical layer. Core42 is responsible for the trusted infrastructure stack, which can be public cloud with sovereign controls, private cloud for mission‑critical workloads or scalable AI Cloud to power AI training and inference. Inception develops the intelligence layer by building LLMs and sector‑specific models. M42 applies those models in healthcare, Space42 extends them into space and satellite analytics, and Presight delivers verticalized AI analytics at scale. It is a modular system but also highly integrated. While we support the broader G42 ecosystem, our infrastructure is built for national impact. We serve governments, regulated industries, and enterprises that require performance, control, and trust.” said Retmi.
Core42 came to prominence when it officially debuted in October- 2023, during the region’s flagship IT and technology symposium, GITEX.
Retmi explained that the sheer demand for digital sovereignty across the UAE, ultimately led G42 to strengthen its cloud & AI business model around this trend, to create Core42 as the main entity within the group to focus on the Sovereign Infrastructure.
“Before Core42, we had G42 Cloud, which was focused on building a sovereign cloud for the UAE. At the time, the emphasis was primarily on private cloud deployments. Today, with Core42, we’ve built a full-stack infrastructure that allows us to serve a much broader range of use cases across the public sector and regulated industries. Whether the need is for private, public, or hybrid models, we deliver sovereign cloud environments aligned to customers’ data classification and security requirements.”
Retmi highlighted how their ability to provide visibility was a key differentiator for the company in terms of the services that they provide.
“With regards to the Sovereign Public Cloud, we partnered with Microsoft to build sovereign controls on top of Microsoft Azure to provide Sovereign Public Cloud capabilities. This provides a cloud environment that is designed for different types of data from our customers. Open data, sensitive data, and confidential data can go to the public cloud, but they can’t go to the standard public cloud, and that’s why we built a powerful and secure sovereign controls on top of Microsoft Azure. We leveraged the national policies on data security and data sovereignty, and we have implemented this into our sovereign controls platform “Insight”, which gives customers the visibility on all their infrastructure. They can see if it is inside or outside the country, and determine whether they are compliant, or not with the policies that are in place. This is what ultimately differentiates the Core42 Sovereign Public Cloud offering versus the solutions provided by the classical hyperscalers,” said Retmi.
When the partnership between Core42 parent company G42 and Microsoft was announced, it was described at the time by many technology commentators and analysts as a landmark collaboration.
Retmi outlined in more detail the nature of the relationship between the two companies and stressed that it wasn’t a typical classical tech partnership.
“The partnership with Microsoft is a strategic one that is not only helping two private companies achieve their business goals but is also helping nations to execute their ICT agenda in relation to the features and services that they provide to their citizens. This is much, much more than any classical partnership. “While Core42 delivers trusted, sovereign infrastructure locally, Microsoft brings the scale and orchestration power of Azure globally. Together, we can meet the full spectrum of sovereignty, from data and operations to the technology stack itself.” Microsoft brings its global understanding of security and sovereignty to the table. Core42 provides the missing piece of the puzzle. We are well versed with the local regulation in the UAE, and we have an acute understanding of the requirements of private and public sector customers in the country. With this we provide an additional layer of trust between the hyper-scalers and those regulated industries and the public sector customers that Core42 is bringing,” said Retmi.
Core 42 Sovereign Public Cloud is also seen as a tool that can act as a springboard, or a foundation for AI innovation.
Retmi documented the role that Core42 is playing in helping the Department of Government Enablement – Abu Dhabi to become the world’s first fully AI-native government by 2027.
“I think it’s important for us to acknowledge that we live in a country where AI is adopted everywhere, and mainly by the public sector, which is unique when you compare it to other countries globally. Abu Dhabi’s ambition to become the world’s first fully-native AI government by the end of 2027, is further evidence of the sort of mindset that exists here. We have been working across public sector projects to implement the Core42 Sovereign Public Cloud and our sovereign controls platform, Insight. The primary objective of these initiatives is to better serve citizens and residents by enabling a trusted, sovereign cloud cloud first, and then enabling AI. Through sovereign cloud capabilities, AI infrastructure, and advanced digital transformation services, we are delivering the intelligent foundations for innovation.
Retmi added that the public sector is demanding far more than traditional cloud services.
“AI moves at extraordinary speed, and Core42 will continue to innovate to stay ahead. We recently launched Core42 AI Cloud a high-performance, heterogeneous platform that unites leading accelerators and delivers the flexibility, performance, and compliance our customers need, with sovereign capabilities and global infrastructure to support them at scale,” said Retmi.
When having conversations about the deployment of advanced technologies and solutions, and the impact that they can have, there are fewer more effective methods to demonstrate their efficacy than highlighting a specific use-case, or customer success story.
And that’s the direction the conversation pivoted towards, as Retmi documented the success of the partnership between Core42 and First Abu Dhabi Bank.
Retmi highlighted the nuanced differences that exist between having data residency versus data sovereignty – and highlighted one of the key requirements from the financial industry was that of data sovereignty.
“Core42 has helped large customers migrate workloads to the Core42 Sovereign Public Cloud. These projects are focused on ensuring both data residency and true data sovereignty, keeping information within national borders while also preventing external access. Our team assesses workloads, applications, and data requirements to design a compliant and secure solution aligned with local regulatory frameworks. By combining the scalability of Azure with Core42’s sovereign controls, we delivered the governance, policies, and safeguards required for highly regulated sectors. This approach is now being extended to financial and government organizations looking to modernize their infrastructure with cloud and AI while maintaining strict sovereignty and compliance standards,” said Retmi.
While Core42 was born in the UAE, its ambitions and operations are increasingly international. The company is now expanding sovereign clusters and AI infrastructure into key hubs in Europe and the United States, creating the unseen foundations that power AI globally.
Retmi concluded a brilliant conversation by discussing how Core42 has plans and aspirations to take its blueprint for sovereign cloud and expand it into other marketplaces, but stressed how they led the way with the sovereign public cloud model.
“We have already talked about how lucky we are to be in the UAE; in terms of the leadership and vision the country has. The country wants to be first when it comes to AI innovation; they want all their government services to be fully AI-native. That is the sort of mindset coming from the top, and that rubs off on the entire tech ecosystem here in the UAE, and we are so lucky to be based in this nation. When it comes to expanding our cloud blueprint, let me give you an example of our Sovereign Public Cloud with Microsoft. What our two organizations have done here in the UAE is important in terms of the trust that we have built around the hyperscaler platform, namely Azure, which is designed to help the public sector and organizations in regulated industries like finance and healthcare to trust the public cloud and move some of their workloads. As Core42, together with Microsoft, we were the first to offer a complete Sovereign Public Cloud product here in the UAE. In June this year, Microsoft announced a similar offering in Europe, and other brands are following suit as well. This is testament to the vision and leadership of the UAE in being an early adopter of next-generation technology,” said Retmi.
Retmi closed by reaffirming that sovereign public cloud remains the cornerstone of Core42’s strategy and its contribution to the broader G42 vision.
“Our blueprint for Sovereign Public Cloud is already proven here in the UAE, where we have enabled some of the most sensitive organizations in government, healthcare, and finance to modernize with trust, compliance, and resilience,” he said. “The partnership with Microsoft has been central to that success, creating a model of how global scale can be combined with local sovereignty. What we are doing here is being noticed internationally, and we are now looking at opportunities to take this sovereign public cloud model to other regions. At the end of the day, cloud is the foundation of AI, and Sovereign Public Cloud is the foundation of digital trust. That is where Core42 continues to play its role.”