Iran’s chokehold over the Strait of Hormuz is providing a bounty for Libya’s oil and gas industry.

As Gulf producers scramble to find alternative channels for export, international oil companies have turned to Libya, which has the largest reserves in Africa, and can deliver to Europe and North America from its unobstructed Mediterranean ports, Arabian Gulf Business Insight reports.

Most recently, Oman’s state-run oil company, OQEP, signed a deal to explore the country’s energy resources.

Several other oil companies have returned to Libya after a 15-year hiatus stemming from political instability, including Eni, BP, TotalEnergies, Repsol, OMV, and Chevron.

Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman told a gathering of oil and gas executives in Russia that the world needs “every molecule of energy” that can be produced amid the current geopolitical upheaval.

“There are so many moving parts, there are so many unknowns, there are things that you think have become a reality, but then you wake up the next morning, and the reality is no longer a reality,” Prince Abdulaziz said at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.

The comments come as the Iran war threatens oil exports and shipping routes across the Gulf while the Ukraine conflict continues to disrupt Russian energy flows, presenting unprecedented challenges for global energy markets, Reuters reports.

OPEC Secretary General, Haitham Al Ghais, meanwhile, told the conference he expects robust oil demand growth and is not changing its estimates, which are at the higher end of the industry’s range. “We need to invest well ahead of time to be prepared for the demand that we see in the future,” he said.

On the sidelines of the conference, Prince Abdulaziz met Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak, who said the pair agreed that uncertainty over global oil demand is making it harder for producers to plan long-term investments. “Estimates made just a few years ago now need to be fundamentally revised,” Novak said.

Abu Dhabi’s G42 and Santander signed a draft agreement to develop artificial intelligence tools together and improve how the Madrid-based lender serves customers across its world operations. 

The deal pairs G42’s AI technology with Santander’s global customer base, banking expertise and regulatory know-how. Two G42 subsidiaries – Inception and Presight – will develop AI tools that can help customers with financial advice, savings plans and personalized banking services.

‘’This agreement reflects Santander’s conviction that artificial intelligence will be foundational to the future of banking, not a feature layered on top of it,” Santander Chief Data & AI Officer Ricardo Martín Manjón said in a statement on Wednesday.

“The technology, the talent and the discipline we bring to this partnership reflect a decade of delivering sovereign AI exactly where the stakes are highest – across governments, healthcare and now banking at global scale,” said Ali Al Amine, Chief Commercial Officer at G42 International.

G42 is a technology holding company primarily owned by Abu Dhabi state-linked entities and Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed, the UAE’s National Security Advisor. Among its investors are the Mubadala sovereign wealth fund, Microsoft and private equity firm Silver Lake.

Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund is shaking up its portfolio companies to put a local stamp on their leadership ranks.

The sovereign wealth fund has begun replacing a number of foreign CEOs with Saudi nationals at more than 100 startups founded over the past decade, the Financial Times reports. 

Among them is electronics manufacter Alat, which named the PIF’s Saudi chief of industrials and mining, Muhammad Aldawood, as acting CEO in place of the departing Amit Midha.

Neo Space Group is substituting Haithem AlFaraj for Martijn Blanken of the Netherlands.

The changes come after the fund conducted a review of all its companies, including how they will reallocate spending in the coming years, the newspaper said, citing an adviser to the Saudi government.

They reflect a wider restructuring of Saudi business after a decade of heavy spending by the PIF, which Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has used to reduce the kingdom’s reliance on oil revenues. 

The changes also point to tensions caused by the government’s Vision 2030 economic reform plans, which aim to create more jobs for citizens but often employ highly paid foreign executives.

Saudi-based companies now account for about 80% of the fund’s portfolio, up from roughly 70% in 2020.

Hadi Badri, CEO of the Dubai Economic Development Corp., said the UAE business center and Hong Kong should act more as partners than rivals.

“Dubai and Hong Kong are often framed as competitors,” Badri said in a LinkedIn post on Tuesday after visiting the city, which acts a financial gateway to China.

 “Yet, families and institutions I met are no longer asking, “’Which hub do I choose?’” They are asking, “’How do these two hubs work together?’’ Badri said. “For a growing number, the answer now includes both,” Badri said.

Speaking on a panel at last week’s UBS Asian Investment Conference Wealth Forum in Hong Kong, Badri said that the cities are complementary by design – Hong Kong bringing decades of deep capital markets and institutional trust, while Dubai serves as the gateway to the Middle East, India, Africa, and Eastern Europe.

Abu Dhabi-based Core42 said it will expand artificial intelligence operations in New York, adding new computing capacity to help meet the growing demand for AI services in the U.S. 

The expansion will bring Core42’s total capacity at its Lake Mariner campus in upstate New York to more than 100 megawatts, making it one of the company’s largest overseas AI infrastructure sites.

Core42, a unit of Abu Dhabi’s AI-focused G42 group, said in a press release that the project is part of its strategy to build digital infrastructure and run advanced AI systems for businesses, governments and other large customers.

The New York expansion is the latest step in Core42’s push into the U.S. and Europe, where it has been investing heavily in data centers and cloud computing. The company recently secured $550 million in financing from HSBC to support international growth.

Richard Nordell, the head of Mubadala’s real estate business, was appointed chief of the sovereign wealth fund’s infrastructure unit, replacing Saed Arar.

Nordell, who joined Mubadala’s real estate team in 2014 and rose to lead the unit in October 2023, assumed the infrastructure role at the start of May, with Khadija Benzit stepping up to succeed him as head of real estate, Infrastructure Investor reports.

The leadership reshuffle comes as Mubadala puts more resources into infrastructure construction, having committed capital last month to the 2.9-gigawatt Hornsea 3 offshore wind farm in the U.K. as part of a group led by Apollo Global Management.

Real estate and infrastructure together account for 17% of Mubadala’s investment portfolio, which has generated a ten-year annualized return of 10%, according to its 2025 annual report.

Gulf sovereign funds stand to reap windfalls from their early investments in Anthropic and SpaceX, as the world’s biggest AI companies race towards Wall Street debuts this year.

Anthropic filed draft paperwork for a public listing on Monday after raising $65 billion via a funding round last week that included Abu Dhabi-based MGX, which already has stakes in Sam Altman’s OpenAI and Elon Musk’s SpaceX, owner of xAI. Now estimated to be worth $965 billion, Anthropic has leapfrogged ChatGPT maker OpenAI in valuation and may beat it to the open market. 

Meanwhile, the combined 0.63% stake in SpaceX owned by Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal’s Kingdom Holding and his private office could be worth as much as $10.5 billion when the rocket maker goes public at an estimated value of $1.75 trillion, Asharq Business reports.

Alwaleed’s businesses were jointly the second-largest investors in Twitter when Musk acquired the social network in 2022 and rebranded it as “X.” The stakes were converted to SpaceX shares when it took control of xAI in February this year.

Shares in Kingdom Holding, which is listed on Saudi Arabia’s Tadawul exchange, have risen more than 40% since last Tuesday in anticipation of a boost from the SpaceX IPO.