Why MGX is buying more Anthropic before it lists

Published: 2026-06-06T10:29:50.000Z

The Gulf's biggest players keep doubling down on frontier AI, and Abu Dhabi's MGX is the latest. The state backed fund increased its stake in Anthropic by joining its $65 billion Series H, likely the Claude maker's last private round before a planned public listing.

The Gulf's biggest players keep doubling down on the companies building frontier artificial intelligence, and Abu Dhabi's MGX is the latest to add to its hand. The state backed investment vehicle has increased its stake in Anthropic, the company behind the Claude chatbot, by joining its $65 billion Series H round. The timing is what makes it notable, since this is widely expected to be Anthropic's final private fundraising before it goes public, with the company having filed confidential paperwork for a listing on june 1. In other words, MGX is buying more right at the door, before public investors get their chance. For anyone unfamiliar with it, MGX is not a typical fund. Launched in 2024 as a partnership between the Abu Dhabi AI conglomerate G42 and the sovereign wealth fund Mubadala, it is chaired by the UAE's national security adviser, Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed, and aims to deploy enormous sums each year. What sets it apart is the breadth of its bets. MGX now holds positions in three of the leading model developers, Anthropic, OpenAI and xAI, all of which are expected to head toward public markets this year, with xAI doing so as part of SpaceX following their merger. That spread gives the UAE arguably the deepest private market exposure to the AI race of any Gulf state. The numbers behind the round explain why investors keep lining up despite the eye watering prices. The Series H values Anthropic at roughly $965 billion, putting it within reach of the trillion dollar mark and ahead of its main rivals. The company has been growing fast on the back of a strategy aimed squarely at enterprise customers, with reports pointing to a run rate in the neighborhood of $47 billion, though that growth comes at a steep cost. Anthropic is said to be spending well over a billion dollars a month on the computing power needed to keep its models running and improving, which helps explain its near constant appetite for fresh capital. There is a backstory worth remembering too. Anthropic had initially resisted taking money from the region, citing national security and ethical concerns, before reversing course, a shift that opened the door to exactly the kind of Gulf capital now piling in. The regional picture is where this really lands. The UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia are increasingly competing to own slices of the AI frontier, with Qatar's QIA invested in both Anthropic and xAI and Saudi Arabia's PIF backed HUMAIN recently backing xAI. For these oil rich states, getting in before a wave of blockbuster listings is a way to convert today's energy wealth into a stake in whatever the AI economy becomes.