Biography

Alex Trafton, BOD member, HPC and AI Factory Security. Alex Trafton is currently the Senior Vice President and Chief Information Security Officer at Core42, where he leads enterprise cybersecurity for a $1.9B AI infrastructure business that operates more than 100,000 GPUs across global AI Factory data centers, the Signature Sovereign Private Cloud in Abu Dhabi, and UAE Azure Sovereign Public Cloud. He is the architect of the Regulated Technology Environment (RTE), designated the “gold standard” for GPU cluster security by the U.S. State Department and UAE Government. The RTE underpinned the U.S./UAE AI Acceleration Partnership of May 2025 and enabled the largest authorized export of advanced U.S. AI hardware in history, including more than 30,000 Nvidia GB300 GPUs.

At Core42, Alex directs a global identity and access management program covering both human and machine identities (including service principals, workload identities, and identity controls for agentic AI), product security and DevSecOps for sovereign AI inference and controls platforms, and security operations across Corporate, AI Factory, and Sovereign Cloud environments. He implements security obligations under the Microsoft Intergovernmental Assurance Agreement (IGAA), U.S. export license conditions, and UAE Information Assurance Regulation requirements, and advises Core42 executives, Microsoft co-development partners, and U.S. and UAE government regulators on security strategy and risk.

Prior to joining the G42 group in 2024, Alex was Senior Managing Director at Ankura Consulting Group, where he co-led the National Security, Trade & Technology practice, advised on more than $40 billion in export-controlled high-performance computing asset transfers, and served as CFIUS Third-Party Monitor and Auditor across ten-plus National Security Agreements in aerospace, defense, space propulsion, renewable energy, and media. Alex currently sits on the Board of Directors of CPX, a UAE-based managed security provider transitioning into an AI-automated cybersecurity product company, and on advisory boards at Datadog and CFIUS.ai.