MGX raises close to $50 billion for AI deals

Published: 2026-06-25T06:33:00.000Z

For years the story of Gulf capital was simple, since oil rich states sent their money out into the world. Abu Dhabi's MGX has rewritten that script, raising close to $50 billion from regional and global investors for a single AI fund, one of the largest pools ever assembled purely to bet on the sector.

For years the story of Gulf capital was simple, since oil rich states sent their money out into the world and wrote cheques from the sovereign balance sheet. Abu Dhabi's MGX has just rewritten that script in dramatic fashion. The investment firm has raised close to $50 billion from regional and global investors for a single fund dedicated to artificial intelligence, one of the largest pools of money ever assembled purely to bet on the sector. Crucially, the capital did not come only from the emirate itself, but from regional sovereign wealth funds, global pension funds and large institutional investors, marking a shift from Abu Dhabi as a pure exporter of capital toward something closer to a global asset manager that raises and deploys outside money. That distinction is the heart of why this matters. By pulling in third party capital, MGX widens its investor base and can chase far bigger deals than state money alone would allow, behaving less like a traditional Gulf sovereign fund and more like a BlackRock style platform built specifically for the AI era. The fund closed in recent weeks and the firm is already deploying the money, with a stated target of surpassing $100 billion in total assets under management. If it gets there, MGX would rank among the largest technology focused investment platforms on the planet, a remarkable position for a firm founded only in 2024. The scale reflects just how expensive frontier AI has become. Training a leading model now costs enormous sums, and building the chips and data centers to support it runs into tens of billions of dollars, with those bills climbing rather than easing. MGX has already established itself as one of the most aggressive financiers of that buildout, holding stakes across the leading model labs including OpenAI, Elon Musk's xAI and Anthropic, while also moving into chips, data centers and digital finance. It was part of the sprawling Stargate infrastructure initiative alongside OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle, took part in the US TikTok ownership restructuring, and has been working on a massive AI data center campus in France. The new fund gives it the firepower to keep playing at that level. The institutional backing of MGX is itself a story. The firm was launched by the sovereign investor Mubadala and the AI champion G42, and is chaired by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the UAE's national security adviser and brother of the president, which places it at the very center of the emirate's strategic thinking rather than off to one side. Having outside investors entrust it with this much capital is a vote of confidence not just in the AI boom but in Abu Dhabi's ability to run a serious global investment vehicle. The regional read is the broader pattern crystallizng into something concrete. Across the Gulf, sovereign funds from Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have decided that owning slices of the models, chips, data centers and energy behind AI is the defining bet of the decade. With abundant capital, cheap energy for data centers and close ties to the biggest names in technology, Abu Dhabi has put itself at the center of that race, and a near $50 billion fund is its loudest statement yet.