First came Disney. Now the Waldorf is finding a home on Abu Dhabi’s fun-filled Yas Island with 133 luxury apartments being built by top UAE developer Aldar bearing the luxury hotel chain’s brand.

It was a matter of hours after Aldar launched sales of the project on Sunday that every one of the units at the Waldorf Astoria Residences Yas was snatched up – from garden apartments to penthouses – generating more than $230 million in sales, The National reports.

The success of Abu Dhabi’s first branded residence sale comes barely two weeks after Disney and the UAE’s Miral Group announced construction of the U.S. entertainment giant’s first theme park in the Middle East. Disney’s $10 billion outpost on Yas Island is expected to open sometime between 2030 and 2033.

Yas is already home to Abu Dhabi’s Formula One track, Etihad Stadium, Ferrari World, the Warner Brothers theme park, Sea World Abu Dhabi and Yas Waterworld, spread among a dozen or so five-star hotels.

Aldar said expatriates and international investors accounted for 76% of the Waldorf buyers, with the rest bought by UAE citizens. Customers from the U.K. and China led the charge.

“The sell-out of Waldorf Astoria Residences Yas marks a significant milestone for Aldar and highlights the attractiveness of Yas Island both as an investment destination and prime residential address,” Aldar CEO Jonathan Emery said.

G42, the UAE’s flagship artificial intelligence company, took a big step in its bid to establish regional leadership in the booming field.

The Abu Dhabi-backed tech company, whose Chairman is National Security Advisor Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed, announced a partnership with OpenAI on Thursday to build an AI data center with a 1-gigawatt capacity that would make it one of the most powerful facilities in the world.

Among other investors in the Abu Dhabi data center called Stargate UAE – OpenAI’s first major project outside the U.S. – are Oracle, SoftBank, Nvidia, and Cisco.

G42 and OpenAI didn’t disclose a cost for the Abu Dhabi project, although similar projects planned in the U.S. run well over $10 billion, The Wall Street Journal reports. It said the data-center project is the fruit of months of negotiations between the UAE and the Trump administration that culminated in a deal last week to allow the U.A.E. to import up to 500,000 advanced AI chips a year.

Abu Dhabi’s Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence, meanwhile, is planning next week’s graduation ceremony, where 104 students from 24 countries will get their degrees, including the six-year-old school’s first Emirati PhD graduate.

MBZUAI’s President Eric Xing told Bloomberg in an interview published today that he hopes to make his school the Stanford of the Gulf, pointing to the culture of innovation and entrepreneurship it cultivates, and its global influence.

The $1.1 billion IPO for Saudi Arabia’s Flynas low-cost airline has reached the runway and is ready for take-off after the offering to institutional investors was nearly 100 times oversubscribed.

The carrier, whose largest shareholders are Prince Alwaleed bin Talal’s Kingdom Holdings and the government’s Public Investment Fund, is the latest in a slew of IPOs for Saudi companies that have also encountered high demand, including Umm Al-Qura construction, which raised more than $500 million in March.

Flynas shares, which will start trading on Riyadh’s Tadawul Stock Exchange May 28, were set on Wednesday at 80 riyals apiece, the top of the range given by the IPO’s investment bankers.

Proceeds from the offering are slated for expanding Flynas’ fleet by 225 planes and launching several new flight hubs. The budget airline flies to 59 destinations and is popular with Muslim pilgrims to Mecca and expat workers from India, the Philippines and elsewhere.

Flynas is not alone among Gulf airlines interested in going public. Abu Dhabi-based Etihad Airways, owned by the ADQ sovereign wealth fund, is actively preparing for an IPO while Emirates and Qatar Airways have been mulling share sales for years.

Still waiting to stretch its wings is Riyadh Air, Saudi Arabia’s new national carrier wholly owned by the PIF, which plans to start flying its stylish royal blue jetliners this year in the fourth quarter.

Abu Dhabi researchers are hopeful for a breakthrough in treatment for Type 1 diabetes within two years using a method of regenerating the pancreas with engineered cells.

The Abu Dhabi Stem Cells Center, a subsidiary of ADQ-controlled Pure Health, is collaborating with Kyoto University and research company Rege Nephro on the research, which is being showcased at Expo 2025 in Osaka, Japan, The National reports.

Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease where the pancreas stops producing insulin, which regulates blood glucose levels.

There is currently no cure, and treatment usually relies on lifelong monitoring and daily insulin injections. It is hoped that regenerating the pancreas could provide long-term relief.

In separate research, ADSCC revealed in January it had successfully used umbilical cord-derived cells to treat a 20-year-old Emirati patient with Type 1 diabetes.

It looks like Donald Trump will get the Qatari Boeing 747 he wants after all.

The Pentagon gave the green light on Wednesday to the Qatari government’s offer to provide the plane – estimated to be worth between $200 million and $400 million – as a gift to replace two aging planes that currently serve as Air Force One.

The plane will require as much as $1 billion and several years of work to provide the level of communications and defense capabilities necessary to function as the flying White House required for presidential travel, The New York Times reports.

Democrats have assailed the plan as a conflict of interest, suggesting Qatar expects political favors in return for the gift.

“The Secretary of Defense has accepted a Boeing 747 from Qatar in accordance with all federal rules and regulations,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said.

Amid the influx of private equity firms to the Gulf’s financial capitals, the head of Kuwait’s $1 trillion sovereign wealth fund says the industry must be handled with caution.

Speaking at the Qatar Economic Forum in Doha Wednesday, Sheikh Saoud Salem Al-Sabah, Managing Director of the Kuwait Investment Authority, warned that some international money managers are struggling to return funds to investors because of inflated valuations.

“Private equity is very troubled, I believe, especially in the large buyouts, venture capital and the rise of continuation vehicles,” Sheikh Saoud said in a panel discussion on the second day of the three-day conference. “That’s a very worrying sign.”

The KIA is the second largest sovereign wealth fund in the Gulf, trailing the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and slightly ahead of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.

The region’s six biggest funds oversee assets of about $4 trillion, and many of them have historically been significant backers of private equity firms, according to Bloomberg, the chief media partner for the annual Doha summit, which is underwritten by the Qatari government.

Also speaking at the conference today was Steven Mnuchin, the former U.S. Treasury Secretary and present Managing Partner of Liberty Strategic Capital, who counseled patience in trade negotiations with China.

“If the U.S. can level the playing field and get better access for the country’s businesses in China, the opportunity is massive,” he said.

Days after U.S. President Donald Trump returned to Washington from a trip that took him to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE, his son Donald Trump Jr. appeared at the Doha conference and said The Trump Organization won’t “do direct deals” with foreign government entities.

While his father has been criticized for entertaining an offer from the government of Qatar to receive a $400 million Boeing 747 plane as a gift to replace Air Force One, the younger Trump said the family business is being cautious about its international connections. 

“We’re going to play by the rules and it’s as simple as that,” he said.

Abu Dhabi’s Technology Innovation Institute has launched Falcon Arabic, a powerful new Arabic-based large language model, as the UAE vies to stay in the consumer AI race.

The new LLM is trained across both Modern Standard Arabic and dialects, and TII claims that it matches the performance of models up to 10 times its size, Bloomberg reports.

The U.S. and China are increasingly dominating the competition to develop the world’s most powerful AI models, leaving countries like the UAE fighting to keep up.

Earlier this month, it was reported that TII’s flagship Falcon model had fallen behind in the rankings and user adoption, while G42, which backed another system called Jais, had shifted focus to customizing models from companies like OpenAI instead of developing its own.

Oman has launched two smart city projects as part of its efforts to cut carbon emissions and diversify its economy.

The first city, for 10,000 residents, will be built in the mountain region of Jebel Akhdar, while the second, Thuraya City in Muscat, will house 8,000 people, Arabian Gulf Business Insights reports.

Both cities will rely on renewable energy, including solar power, and will be used to promote Oman’s carbon-free environment plans, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Planning said.

The announcement comes a week after the Sultanate launched the Oman Centre for Net Zero. Like other Gulf countries, Oman has been ramping up investment in green infrastructure to diversify its economy beyond oil and gas.

The push for smart cities also reflects the country’s commitment to attracting foreign investment and creating livable, future-ready urban environments.