At a glance
UAE joint venture AIQ, owned 51% by Presight AI Holding and 49% by ADNOC, is entering India. At a media briefing on 30 September 2026, CEO Dennis Jol and CTO Saravan Penubarthi confirmed the company has signed a contract with a large Indian oil and gas conglomerate — name not disclosed — and will deploy its AI and machine-learning platform across the client's refineries, fuel stations and digital retail stores. India becomes AIQ's eighth export market after the United States, Canada, Kazakhstan, Egypt, Colombia, Malaysia, Vietnam and Kuwait.
What AIQ actually sells
AIQ is an Abu Dhabi-based developer of industrial AI for oil and gas, with more than 20 products shipped and 16 patents filed. Its focus areas are seismic analysis, geological modelling, operations monitoring, reservoir performance and reservoir management. Technology partners include Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon Web Services, SLB (Schlumberger), Baker Hughes and NOV. ADNOC already runs AIQ's products in live operations, which is what lets the venture sell them abroad as proven-in-production rather than pilot MVPs.
Deal structure, and why the customer is unnamed
Jol described the Indian client only as one of the "large oil and gas conglomerates" and declined to name it — standard practice while the two sides finalise the public portion of the deal. The contract value is also withheld. AIQ specifically noted this is a deployment programme and should not be compared with annual revenue or on-hand cash.
Geography: eight markets in 12-15 months
AIQ's international expansion is relatively recent — exports began some 12 to 15 months ago. In that window the venture has established itself in North America (United States, Canada), Kazakhstan, Egypt, Colombia, Malaysia, Vietnam and Kuwait. India becomes the eighth market and effectively the first large South Asia buyer. ADNOC still provides around 95% of AIQ's revenue, with all external customers combined at roughly 5% — the story is incremental export volume on top of a stable home contract, not substitution.
M&A plans and "a ton of cash"
Growth will not be purely organic. "We sit on a ton of cash … deploying capital is definitely up front and center," Jol said, flagging acquisition appetite. For the UAE market, this means AIQ is likely to show up as a buyer of smaller industrial AI teams — both locally and internationally — over the coming quarters. For startups working with industrial data, that opens a fresh conversation window.
What this means for UAE businesses
For companies operating in the Emirates, the AIQ deal is one more sign that the country is turning into a technology exporter, not just a capital-receiving jurisdiction. That sits alongside the diversification of the UAE economy currently being stress-tested in 2026: the share of non-oil sectors and services is growing, and industrial AI exports fit squarely into that trend. The India corridor is a separate story in its own right — the UAE and India have been moving goods and services under the CEPA framework since 2022, and our detailed look at CEPA and the Mumbai-to-Minsk trade corridor explains the regulatory frame in which transactions like the AIQ contract are being closed.
Source
The facts in this article are based on a Reuters report distributed via Zawya (LSEG) from AIQ's public media briefing on 30 September 2026, featuring CEO Dennis Jol and CTO Saravan Penubarthi, and on the publicly disclosed 2024 restructuring that gave Presight AI Holding 51% and ADNOC 49% of the joint venture.
