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.

Abu Dhabi-based AI investment firm MGX joined Anthropic’s latest fundraising round, which valued the U.S. artificial intelligence company at $965 billion.

MGX was among the major investors in the Series H round led by Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks and Sequoia Capital.

The investment deepens MGX’s growing presence in artificial intelligence alongside earlier funding of OpenAI and other tech ventures that have made Abu Dhabi one of AI’s global hubs.

In October, MGX joined the Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure Partnership and BlackRock’s Global Infrastructure Partners consortium in a deal to acquire Plano, Texas-based Aligned Data Centers.

Uber boosted its stake in UAE-based delivery and payments app Careem, three years after the “everything app” was spun out from the Careem ride-share business which the U.S.  company acquired in 2020. 

Uber Technologies acquired a further 12.5% stake in Careem Technologies from Emirates Telecommunications Group, known as e&, for $100 million in cash, reducing e&’s stake from 50.03% to 37.52%. The agreement includes options allowing either party to require the sale of e&’s remaining stake. 

The Dubai-based telecom company invested $400 million for its stake in Careem when the entity was created in 2023, meaning it is selling its shares at close to their original value. 

Uber’s $3 billion purchase of the Careem ride sharing business was the biggest tech sector deal in the Middle East at the time and gave the company access to markets across the Middle East, including Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. More recently, it has launched robotaxi services in a joint operation with WeRide.

Khaldoon Al Mubarak, Group CEO of the UAE’s Mubadala sovereign wealth fund and Chairman of Manchester City, joined a dinner with other football executives and investors in Budapest last week to discuss the financial future of the sport.

The gathering was organized by Michael Rubin, founder and CEO of the sports merchandising firm Fanatics, and took place ahead of Saturday’s UEFA Champions League final, which Paris Saint-Germain won, according to a post on Rubin’s Instagram feed.

Among those participating were UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin, Nasser Al-Khelaifi, Chairman of Qatar Sports Investments, which owns PSG; Shahid Khan, owner of Fulham F.C. and the NFL’s Jacksonville Jaguars, Alibaba co-founder Joe Tsai who owns the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets, and Robert Kraft, owner of the NFL’s New England Patriots.

The dinner’s guestlist highlighted growing Gulf influence in professional soccer, with Qatar’s ownership of PSG, the UAE’s majority ownership of Manchester City, and the Saudi Public Investment Fund’s majority stake in Newcastle.

ADNOC has been quietly running a wartime shipping operation through the Strait of Hormuz, ferrying oil, fuel and gas cargoes past Iranian and U.S. naval forces to customers across Asia.

The UAE’s national oil company has relied on “dark transits” – switching off tanker transponders while crossing Hormuz – and a fleet tied to Navig8, a shipping company majority-owned by ADNOC’s logistics arm and Chinese petrochemicals giant Wanhua Chemical Group, allowing it to keep exports flowing, Bloomberg reports.

ADNOC has been among the Gulf’s most successful exporters during nearly three months of war, using short shuttle runs from Zirku Island, Ruwais and Das Island to transfer cargoes in safer waters off Fujairah, Sohar and India’s west coast before sending them onward to buyers, according to the news agency.

QatarEnergy has also quietly resumed exports through Hormuz, with the LNG tanker Al Rayyan recently detected heading toward China after disappearing from public tracking systems near Qatar’s Ras Laffan export terminal.

The urgency reflects both limited regional storage capacity and the UAE’s increasingly independent oil strategy after its formal departure from OPEC on May 1.

The successful transits, however, represent only a fraction of pre-war trade flows: Only seven shipments have been identified making it through Hormuz since the U.S. and Israel started strikes against Iran on Feb. 28, compared to roughly three exits a day before the conflict began.

Egypt plans to conduct its first nationwide aerial geological survey in more than 40 years to identify gold, copper and other mineral reserves as it seeks to attract foreign mining investment.

Spain’s Xcalibur Smart Mapping will work with Egypt’s Nuclear Materials Authority to carry out the project.

Energy Minister Karim Badawi said the survey will cover areas including Egypt’s Eastern and Western deserts and the Sinai Peninsula.

The aim is to create a “modern, highly accurate mining database” to help investors identify commercially viable mineral deposits faster and with lower exploration risk, he said.