Albania's Smart City Cost Doubled. The US Is Watching the AI

A government AI deal is turning into a global warning. The Smart City program in Albania climbed from an announced $60 million to $118.5 million before a year had passed, and the company behind it runs the AI layer over national data. U.S. institutions have repeatedly raised concerns about the vendor's ties to China, and this week an MP put the full picture on the table (Albeu, 2026).

The figure jumps off the page for the size of the project. Smart City Albania was announced in April 2024 at about $60 million, and within a year the contract had climbed to the $118.5 million figure (Albeu, 2026). Opposition MP Klevis Balliu is now demanding why Albanians pay double, why no competitive tender was held, and what happens to the data.

• Reported 5,000+ smart cameras across major cities, including schools.
• No open competitive procedure, PM's office says the simplicity is safer.
• Presight AI, part of Abu Dhabi's G42, runs the analytics.
• U.S. congressional committees have asked investigations into G42's China links.

What does the Smart City sell exactly?

Beyond the big digit, the operational question is the camera network and data layer. The project covers more than 5,000 smart cameras and surveillance in major Albanian cities, with data processing hosted as part of the country's critical infrastructure (Albeu, 2026). For a nation inside NATO, a system holding that much citizen data becomes a security asset, not just a tech purchase.

Why do U.S. institutions flag the vendor?

The specific choice is the vendor: Presight AI, which sits inside the G42. Multiple U.S. institutions have repeatedly communicated concerns about documented links between the group and entities connected to China's military and intelligence machinery (Albeu, 2026). In this context, a surveillance contract in a NATO country becomes a real burden.

What is the criticism based on?

MP Balliu's stated case is procedural and fact-list-friendly: the price range, the absence of competitive bidding, the volume of citizens' data, and the national security profile of the systems that will store it. He notes that U.S. congressional committees have formally asked for assessments of the China links, and frames the result as a matter of responsibility for a NATO member (Albeu, 2026).

Public funds, citizens' privacy and national security cannot be treated as confidential matters. They require full transparency and responsibility.

— Klevis Balliu, MP, August 2026

Why do smart cities keep becoming protest points?

This is not an Albania-only fight. Privacy and the reach of government data have turned surveillance procurement in dozens of countries into a recurring story in 2026, the same arguments we have covered around U.S. data centers and AI regulation: public oversight, state use of citizen data, and who gets to store it. That tension is the universal cost of any smart-city upgrade.

What happens if the questions go unanswered?

The next moves are regulatory and public. The government has published no independent risk assessment of the national security effects, and the opposition has escalated protests outside the prime minister's office with its demands repeated daily. The default for officials who need to answer: publish transparency documents, or pick vendors cleared of sensitive supply-chain concerns.

For citizens the practical question is also the simplest: where does the data live, who can query it, and what survives a change in government? Those are the conditions of open democracies, and the project should meet them too.

What does G42's balancing act have to do with Albania?

Presight AI's parent, G42, is an Abu Dhabi company that sits in the middle of the biggest realignment in AI geopolitics. Microsoft took a $1.5 billion stake in G42 in 2025, partly as an anchor to pull the firm toward American technology after Washington repeatedly raised national-security warnings about its Chinese partners, and G42 publicly unwound those relationships under that pressure (Reuters, 2025). A NATO member signing surveillance capacity to a G42-linked vendor puts Albania squarely inside that friction zone between allied supply chains and a single AI vendor.

The practical logic of the contract is easy to defend: cheap AI, a western-friendly interface, and a partner already working with Cisco and Oracle on the region's data infrastructure. The political logic is harder, because the same company's platforms were sold into policing systems that European regulators are now auditing under the EU AI Act transparency provisions (Albeu, 2026).

What should Albania's government release next?

The checks that would settle the debate are cheap and public: a full economic case, an independent security impact review, signed subcontract commitments on where data physically lives, and an export-control check on what the US may require. None of that ends a serious debate about surveillance. It would, however, put Albanian citizens in the same position as any US, EU, or allied citizen when their own government introduces a city-wide camera grid.

Bottom line: a routine procurement of thousands of storage cameras for a NATO member is speeding toward a breakdown of cost controls and trust in a G42-linked AI vendor. No contract number ever answers the question of data security, but a public tender, a public risk assessment, and independent review would go a long way to answering it.

• Data center anger is hardening into a political movement
• The EU AI Act rules that took effect
• The race to zero in AI pricing
• Albeu: Klevis Balliu on the Smart City project
• Presight AI
• G42