The UAE’s power man met with the head of SoftBank on Thursday as the Japanese firm is reportedly looking to make investments at the intersection of energy and artificial intelligence. 

Dr. Sultan Al Jaber, who in addition to serving in the Cabinet as Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology is also CEO of state-owned oil company ADNOC and Chairman of alternative energy firm Masdar, met with SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son in Tokyo.

The pair discussed “trends in the energy, industry and advanced technology sectors, highlighting the importance of increasing strategic investments in these areas to enhance sustainable economic growth,” according to an Instagram post from the Ministry of Industry and Advanced Technology.

Abu Dhabi and SoftBank have a history: The capital’s sovereign wealth fund Mubadala was an anchor investor in Son’s Vision Fund I, ultimately writing down its stake as the fund’s big play for WeWork went belly up.

SoftBank’s fortunes have since reversed with Arm. The U.K. chip designer it acquired in 2016 has more than doubled its market capitalization to about $170 billion since going public last year in New York.

The Information reported on Thursday that SoftBank is looking to borrow up to $10 billion from banks to enable investments in energy-related projects. The data centers that power AI are hugely energy-intensive and face growing demand.

SoftBank is also exploring ways to gain access to a large volume of Nvidia’s graphics processing units, the building block of AI development, the Silicon Valley publication reported. 

Al Jaber also met with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida as well as Hayashi Yoshimasa, Chief Cabinet Secretary; and Taro Kono, Minister of Digital Transformation.

Alongside UAE Minister of Foreign Trade Thani Al Zeyoudi, he met with Ken Saito, Japan’s Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan to discuss strengthening trade and investments in energy and advanced industry with the world’s fourth-largest economy. 

UAE virtual asset trading platform BitOasis has been bought for an undisclosed amount by India’s largest trading platform, CoinDCX.

Founded in 2016 by Ola Doudin, Tarek Kaylani and Daniel Robenek, BitOasis is MENA’s first and largest crypto asset exchange, available in 15 countries across the region for users to buy, hold and sell over 60 cryptocurrencies.

The company has processed over $6 billion in trading volume and raised more than $40 million in funding from CoinDCX and other investors including the UAE’s Wamda Capital; U.S. VC funds Jump Capitaland Pantera Capital; and Berlin-based Global Founders Capital.

CoinDCX will gain market entry into MENA with its acquisition, “capitalizing on its mature market and the population’s keen interest in crypto investment,” Sumit Gupta, Co-Founder of CoinDCX, said.

Startup exits are on the rise in the region. Forty-three were sold in 2023, up from 15 in 2015, according to funding platform Magnitt. 

Demand for new sources of natural gas as a cleaner alternative to oil is leading top Gulf energy companies to look at acquisition prospects in Australia. Most recently, both Saudi Aramco and UAE-owned ADNOC have considered making separate bids for Adelaide-based Santos Ltd., the country’s No. 3 producer of liquified natural gas, Bloomberg reports.

While none of the three companies confirmed discussions about a potential purchase, shares of Santos on the Australian Securities Exchange jumped as much as 6.5% after Wednesday’s report, boosting its market value to $17.9 billion. In the past, Santos has rejected takeover bids from U.S. and Australian competitors, as well as offers to buy just its LNG business.

Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman announced on Tuesday that Aramco has discovered two natural gas fields and two natural gas reservoirs within the kingdom. The company said last week that it signed contracts worth more than $25 billion to expand its gas business.

Trade from Mediterranean gas fields, meanwhile, could be interrupted if the conflict between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah turns into full-scale war, The National reports. Abu Dhabi-based Mubadala Energy is a partner in Israel’s offshore Leviathan gas field, along with U.S.-based Chevron Corp.

A 44-year-old Abu Dhabi family conglomerate is looking to bankroll Hollywood blockbusters to secure its future fortunes as the UAE capital establishes itself as a hub for content creation and big-budget productions.

United Al Saqer Group, founded by members of the Abu Dhabi royal family, has invested $200 million in The DNEG Group, valuing the British-Indian firm at more than $2 billion.

DNEG – known for special effects work on films like “Dune,” Oppenheimer” and “Interstellar” – said the cash injection will be used to open a new office and “visual experience hub” in Abu Dhabi, “with plans to develop a world-class ecosystem in the Middle East for content production, storage and distribution.”

The funds will also help scale its technology division, Brahma, which is developing an AI-powered, photo-real CGI creator. 

The investment is the latest example of the Gulf’s evolution as a source of capital. In recent years, investment activity, largely led by the sovereign wealth funds, has become more active and strategic while at the same time coming with strings attached to bring firms with Gulf backing to do business locally here in the region – helping to reach targets on job creation and economic diversification away from oil. 

United Al Saqer has for decades poured money into traditional sectors that propelled the wave of economic development after oil was first discovered like construction, restaurants and car sales.

The group’s subsidiaries build mosques, hospitals and grocery stores across the region. They also sell the majority of commercial vehicles on the UAE’s roads and most of the BMWs purchased in Abu Dhabi.

The group’s foray into modern filmmaking is in step with another recent move: a research endowment it made to Abu Dhabi’s artificial intelligence university late last year to develop AI applications in digital health. 

From meeting U.S. policymakers face-to-face in Washington to chatting with OpenAI execs in San Francisco, UAE Minister of State for Foreign Trade and Talent Attraction Thani Al Zeyoudi says his cross-country tour last week should pay dividends in relationship-building abroad.

Along with a raft of discussions about artificial intelligence “as the defining technology of our era,” Al Zeyoudi’s Silicon Valley sojourn put him in direct contact with a wide gamut of Silicon Valley investment firms, he said on Tuesday in a LinkedIn post.

Those included TPG, Thoma Bravo, Viking Global Investors, Lux Capital, Khosla Ventures, Brave Capital, Audere Capital, Flagship Capital Management, General Catalyst and Mubadala Ventures – which the minister called “sources of capital formation being directed to bleeding-edge technologies shaping the world today.”

He said companies including Flexport, Interos, Lightmatter and Lila Sciences were “keen to explore partnerships with the UAE.”

Reflecting on the SelectUSA Investment Summit in suburban Washington D.C., where he was a keynote speaker, Al Zeyoudi noted his meetings with U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo and New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy as especially useful in kindling American-Emirati collaboration.

“While we shared non-oil trade of $40 billion in 2023, I believe our nations have only touched the surface of bilateral opportunity,” Al Zeyoudi said. “Sectors such as renewable energy, sustainability, biotechnology, life sciences, finance, and logistics are all ripe for further development.”

Abu Dhabi’s AI-focused energy company AIQ, meanwhile, announced a partnership agreement on Monday with Texas-based Halliburton’s Landmark unit to help expand the use of AI tools in oil and gas production.

As Dubai breaks ground this week on its own financial hub expansion, Abu Dhabi too is bursting at the seams to accommodate the financial firms flocking to the UAE capital, Bloomberg reports.

For several years Abu Dhabi Global Market on Al Maryah Island struggled to attract tenants and its four towers were largely unoccupied.

But recent efforts to attract global players in finance have brought the campus to near-capacity.

The government is now looking to bridge the free zone with next-door neighbor Al Reem Island, a move, first announced in April 2023, that will give it 10 times as much space and make it one of the largest financial districts in the world, occupying 3,558 acres. 

Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund swung into the black in 2023, recording revenues of SR 331 billion ($88.3 billion) and more than doubling earnings growth from 2022, according to an audit by KPMG.

The fund is also nearing the trillion-dollar mark in assets under management, surging 28% to $986 billion last year.

The PIF, the most active state-backed investor in the world, has been fueled by surging public equities; the receipt of a transfer of 4% of Aramco shares; a turnaround in fortunes at Softbank, which in previous years has been the source of losses; and a flurry of acquisitions including in technology and energy diversification.

The fund recorded a profit of SR 64 billion ($17 billion) compared to a loss of SR 17 billion ($4.5 billion) in the previous year.

The national purse is the foundation of Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman’s Vision 2030 economic diversification strategy, relied upon to drive tens of billions of dollars in investments to develop nascent sectors like tourism, technology and manufacturing in the kingdom. 

Egypt emerged from its weekend huddle with the European Union holding signed agreements for billions of dollars in business deals ranging from construction projects to renewable energy.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told the Egypt-EU Investment Conference outside Cairo on Saturday that deals potentially worth over 40 billion euros ($43 billion) were being negotiated with Egyptian partners.

Among them were agreements on four green ammonia projects including an $11 billion deal with Frankfurt-based DAI Infrastruktur.

The Sovereign Fund of Egypt also signed a deal with BP, UAE’s Masdar, Egyptian infrastructure company Hassan Allam Utilities and Infinity Power to invest in a green ammonia plant in Ain Sukhna Port on the western coast of the Gulf of Suez.

EU officials said they would move ahead with plans to invest up to 1 billion euros  in the Egyptian economy, the first tranche of a 7.4 billion-euro European aid package agreed upon in March.