UAE exit from OPEC will boost investment, Al Jaber says

By announcing its decision to leave OPEC last week, the UAE has seized an opportunity to attract more investment and strengthen the economy, ADNOC chief Dr. Sultan Al Jaber says.

“It serves our national interests and long-term strategic objectives, aligns with our industrial, economic, and developmental ambitions, and gives us greater ability to accelerate investment, expand, and create value,” Al Jaber, the state oil company’s Group CEO and the UAE Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology, said today in Abu Dhabi.

Al Jaber spoke at the opening of the annual “Make it in the Emirates” expo, a four-day government-sponsored trade show that promotes domestic manufacturing by offering incentives to attract global companies.

Among the event’s backers are ADNOC, L’imad Holding, International Holding Co., Mubadala and Dubai Islamic Bank.

The UAE’s exit from OPEC, which took effect May 1, was largely connected to its irritation with the oil cartel’s dictating of production quotas across the industry to keep prices high. UAE Energy Minister Suhail Al Mazrouei has said disruptions to oil shipping caused by the current conflict created favorable conditions to leave the organization.

Parting with OPEC “is part of a broader effort to reshape our economy and industrial base through a vision that connects energy, technology, and industry, aligning our resources with national priorities to build a stronger, more resilient economy,” Al Jaber said.

Mubadala’s Khaldoon Al Mubarak touts fund’s ‘AI copilot’ at conference in Pittsburgh

Khaldoon Al Mubarak, Chief Executive Officer of Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala Investment Co., said the sovereign wealth fund is integrating artificial intelligence at every level of its decision-making process, describing AI as a transformative tool that is rapidly strengthening the fund’s capabilities.

Speaking Tuesday at the Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit at Carnegie Mellon University, organized by Republican Sen. Dave McCormick, Al Mubarak said Mubadala makes about 40% of its investments in the U.S. and wants to play a pioneering role in the global use of AI.

“What we’re doing a lot of right now is not just investing, but also enabling the technology,” he said while participating in a panel discussion. “When it comes to the enablement of AI, we’re probably, surprisingly, one of the leaders in the world.”

President Donald Trump headlined the summit with an address in which he hailed more than $92 billion in new investments made in Pennsylvania by such firms as Blackstone, CoreWeave and Meta Platforms focused on artificial intelligence and energy infrastructure.

Mubadala is an investor in G42, an Abu Dhabi-based tech firm that raised $1.5 billion from Microsoft last year to work together on AI and build data centers. The fund is also a shareholder in MGX, an investment firm participating alongside OpenAI, Softbank and Oracle in the $100 billion venture announced by Trump in January to fund artificial intelligence infrastructure in the U.S.

At the one-day conference, Blackstone President Jon Gray outlined some $25 billion the firm plans to invest in data centers. He was joined in Pittsburgh by BlackRock’s Larry Fink, Bridgewater’s Nir Bar Dea and a roster of other top corporate executives and cabinet members.

Al Mubarak said Mubadala’s Investment Committee now includes an “AI copilot” that interacts with both committee members and external teams pitching investment proposals. The fund, which manages approximately $300 billion in assets, has increasingly positioned itself as a technology-focused investor, backing AI firms alongside deploying the tools internally. 

“In Mubadala, our AI copilot sits with us in the Investment Committee,” he said. “All the board members, all the Investment Committee members obviously interact directly with the agent and obviously the teams (that are) coming in (and) pitching us.”

The panel in which Al Mubarak participated was moderated by Dina Powell McCormick, the senator’s wife who was Deputy National Security Advisor to Trump in his first term and is now Vice Chairman and President of Global Client Services at BDT & MSD Partners, a merchant bank based in Chicago and New York.

He described the AI copilot as a powerful analytical tool used to challenge investment propositions and support human judgment.

“What I found now after almost one year of implementation is a huge learning curve, and really that capability is strengthening in a way that is phenomenal,” Al Mubarak said. 

Among corporate leaders at the event were ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods, Chevron’s Mike Wirth, Alphabet/Google’s Ruth Porat, Palentir’s Alex Karp and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei.

From Trump’s cabinet, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Energy Secretary Chris Wright attended the forum.