Türkiye hosts GITEX AI summit to drive $10B tech investment
22:58, 08/09/2026, TuesdayU: Update: 23:11, 08/09/2026, Tuesday
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The two-day GITEX AI summit opens in Istanbul on Wednesday with more than 350 global and local firms showcasing Türkiye’s artificial intelligence infrastructure, as Ankara targets $10 billion in private-sector investments and 1 gigawatt of data center capacity by the end of the decade.
Türkiye’s Investment and Finance Office will open the two-day GITEX AI summit in Istanbul on Wednesday, bringing together more than 350 technology firms to showcase the country’s expanding artificial intelligence infrastructure and its plan to attract $10 billion in private-sector investments by 2030.
International tech giants join Istanbul summit
The summit, organized with the Industry and Technology Ministry as strategic partner and Anadolu as global communications partner, will run through Thursday. Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services, Huawei, Dell Technologies, and SAP are among the international corporations slated to participate alongside emerging local startups seeking foreign investment.
Senior executives from Equinix Türkiye, Schneider Electric, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise will attend the opening-day panel addressing physical computing infrastructure requirements in Ankara’s national AI strategy. The event is organized by inD — a joint venture between the Dubai World Trade Center and Informa.
Ankara outlines 1 gigawatt data center goal
The gathering aligns with Türkiye’s AI vision and action plan for 2026-2030, which envisions expanding national data center capacity to at least 1 gigawatt by decade’s end. A dedicated section will explore strategies for building secure, scalable frameworks to integrate artificial intelligence into organizational workflows.
Trendyol, Andevos, and Halkbank will represent Türkiye’s corporate sector alongside Antalya Technopark, Istanbul Technical University’s ARI Technopark, and Giresun Technopark. The summit aims to connect these local entities with global cloud providers to accelerate domestic computing deployment.
GITEX expands to bridge markets
GITEX — the Gulf Information Technology Exhibition — has expanded beyond Dubai to host events across the Middle East and North Africa, with the Istanbul edition serving as a bridge between European and Asian technology markets. The Türkiye event follows recent GITEX summits in Nigeria and Morocco as part of the brand’s push into emerging digital economies.