Abu Dhabi’s newest sovereign wealth fund has become central to the UAE’s “Zero Hormuz” strategy, a plan to bypass the troubled waterway that is evolving into one of the world’s largest infrastructure efforts.

As part of that plan, L’Imad Holding, overseen by Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed, has been buying out minority shareholders in AD Ports Group through its subsidiary ADQ.

The fund is now preparing to spend tens of billions of dollars more on new port infrastructure outside the strait, Bloomberg reports.

The effort makes Sheikh Khaled and the powerbrokers surrounding him crucial to both Washington and Wall Street, the news agency reports, citing discussions between the Crown Prince, L’Imad CEO Jassem Bu Ataba Al Zaabi and finance bosses including BlackRock’s Larry Fink.

Saudi Arabia has put aside about 14 gigawatts of power capacity for Humain to build one of the world’s largest AI computing developments.

CEO Tareq Amin outlined the allocation at Servcorp’s inaugural economic forum in Riyadh on Tuesday, saying government agencies had helped secure power, land and infrastructure for the AI factories, Asharq Al-Awsat reports.

That’s roughly the output of 14 typical nuclear reactors and nearly three times the capacity of the campus that will house the UAE’s planned 5-gigawatt Stargate AI development. Super-sized data centers that both train and run AI systems are known in the industry as AI factories.

Humain, the Saudi AI company launched in May 2025 and controlled by the Public Investment Fund, develops data centers, cloud services, AI models and applications.

The company’s projects include a partnership with Amazon Web Services involving more than $5 billion in planned investment, and a collaboration with AMD to invest up to $10 billion in 500 megawatts of AI computing capacity over five years.

Etihad Rail will begin passenger services from Dubai tomorrow, connecting the city’s Al Yalayis station with Abu Dhabi and Fujairah.

The Dubai-Abu Dhabi journey will take about 64 minutes, with fares starting at 39 dirhams ($10.60) for comfort class and 109 dirhams for premium seats.

The debut comes three months after the launch of the UAE’s first passenger line between Abu Dhabi and Fujairah, with the Dubai station primed to serve as a key commuter route link to the capital.

UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed and Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed, Crown Prince of Dubai and UAE Minister of Defense, attended the official opening of the Dubai station on Monday.

Less than a month after Saudi-backed LIV Golf filed for bankruptcy after the withdrawal of the Public Investment Fund as its key financial backer, the kingdom is also pulling back from the Ladies European Tour.

The PIF Global Series, a series of golfing events that featured five tournaments this year with a total $15 million prize pool, will be reduced to just the PIF London Championship, to be renamed The Championship, with a $4 million prize fund.

“The shape of our investment has changed as our strategy has developed,” a spokesperson for Golf Saudi told Front Office Sports.

Golf Saudi published a statement detailing a pivot towards grassroots development of golf for women and girls within the kingdom, echoing the PIF’s broader shift towards domestic spending over the past year.

The loss of the high-paying PIF-sponsored events will be a major blow for the LET, where most tournaments have purses of about $500,000 or less.

Two final $2 million events in Korea and China will still go ahead this year and Golf Saudi will sponsor the LET’s Order of Merit season-long points race.

LIV Golf filed for Chapter 11 protection earlier this month, revealing millions of dollars in debts to some of its biggest stars, after burning through some $5 billion in four years.

Gems Education is planning to launch artificial intelligence-powered “twins” of its teachers for use in UAE classrooms.

Gems, the largest private school provider in the Emirates, has been working with Napster, which rebranded as an AI company last year, to design digital personas that look, sound, and respond like specific staff members, The National reports.

“This initiative is designed to extend the reach and impact of teachers, not replace them,” Baz Nijjar, Senior Vice President of Innovation, AI and Futurism at Gems Education, and Managing Director of its Intelligence 360 platform, told the newspaper.

The school group sees after-hours homework assistance as the primary use case for the twins and says teachers will not be automatically required to participate. Gems has more than 200,000 pupils across its network.

Some international dealmakers are keeping Dubai as their main Gulf base despite Saudi Arabia’s push to bring regional headquarters to Riyadh. 

Moelis, Rothschild, PJT Partners and other so-called boutique firms have opened offices in Riyadh but have yet to obtain regional headquarters licenses, the Financial Times reports.

Under the rule enacted in 2024, that could cost them work with Saudi government entities, including the sovereign Public Investment Fund, which has 93 portfolio companies.

The headquarters regulation was part of the kingdom’s effort to attract more multinational companies and strengthen Riyadh’s position against Dubai as the Gulf’s main business center. Smaller advisory firms say the license requirement to employ at least 15 senior managers is too costly.

Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Investment says the program has already exceeded its 2030 target of 500 companies, with more than 700 registered.

France is sending troops, radar and air defenses to protect Saudi Aramco’s facilities at the Red Sea port of Yanbu after another Houthi attack.

President Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday that the French forces would protect the site but would not take part in combat. Macron acted after Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan called for international help to contain the Houthis, saying the threat extends beyond the kingdom.

Yanbu has become a critical outlet for Saudi oil as the war disrupts shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. Saudi Arabia said it intercepted missiles aimed at Yanbu and the city of Taif on Thursday, while the Houthis claimed attacks on Aramco facilities at the port and a target in Riyadh.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey said they would arrange an urgent meeting of their military chiefs to show support for the kingdom after Houthi attacks. Prince Faisal discussed the gathering with the Pakistani and Turkish foreign ministers in New York on Thursday under the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement, which treats an attack on one member as an attack on all three.

Also in New York, U.S. and Iranian negotiators are reportedly exploring a phased deal that would see Tehran reopen the Strait of Hormuz and Washington lift its blockade of Iranian ports.

The two countries, which have failed to reach similar agreements in recent months, were pushing for a breakthrough Thursday on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, with Qatari officials mediating the negotiations, Bloomberg reports.

Saudi Arabia’s expatriate jobs boom is fading as the Iran war compounds Public Investment Fund cutbacks and a broader hiring slowdown, resulting in fewer opportunities and less generous pay packages.

“The war has exacerbated PIF cutbacks,” Mark Butler, a partner at Saudi recruitment company Sterling Bell, told Arabian Gulf Business Insight.

The shift has come after a hiring boom that recruiters described as “so intense” that they were often given just months to find thousands of workers for PIF-led projects, often with generous salaries and incentives.

Hiring could accelerate again ahead of Expo 2030 Riyadh and the 2034 World Cup, but recruiters expect the market to remain subdued in the near term.