Gulf

1. Tahnoon meets Trump
2. Gulf productivity lags
3. Dubai’s expanding free zones
4. Elon props up X valuation
5. Kuwait’s citizen purge

Why Qatar built nursing homes that no one will use.

Trump hosts UAE’s Sheikh Tahnoon

UAE National Security Adviser Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed met with US President Donald Trump and tech luminaries in Washington this week seeking to deepen the two countries’ ties. Discussions centered on regional security and how to “increase our partnership for the advancing of our economic and technological futures,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.

Abu Dhabi is eyeing US deals through ADNOC’s international investment arm XRG, which is building up capacity in liquefied natural gas and the specialty chemicals that help cool data centers. It’s also seeking steady access to the most advanced AI chips — looming export curbs could threaten the UAE’s ambitions to develop massive, home-grown AI models.

The UAE has already won over American tech and finance giants. Abu Dhabi inked a deal with Microsoft during the visit to implement AI services across the capital’s government, while Nvidia and Elon Musk’s xAI agreed to join the $30 billion BlackRock AI Infrastructure Partnership, backed by Abu Dhabi’s MGX and Microsoft.

Sheikh Tahnoon’s schedule included Musk, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, and Oracle’s Larry Ellison, as well as Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, BlackRock’s Larry Fink, and Palantir’s Alex Karp, Semafor scooped.

Gulf tech leaps, productivity lags

Gulf governments — except Kuwait — have climbed global rankings for digital services, but efficient bureaucracy hasn’t boosted productivity. Services that used to require multiple visits to government offices such as visa renewals and property registration are completed in many countries by app. But according to AGBI, IMF officials recently discussed why the region, despite deploying advanced tech in government and finance, remains a global outlier in productivity growth. A study last year found that productivity growth across the Gulf is low or even negative. Limited private sector involvement and low research and development spending were among the factors hindering productivity gains.

Dubai’s pro-business moves

Dubai is giving both businesses and its top financial court more room to grow. Companies in free trade zones will be able to do business in the emirate’s mainland under new licenses as Dubai looks to double the size of its economy by 2033. The emirate has more than 30 economic zones that allow for 100% foreign ownership and tax breaks, with dedicated districts for the finance, technology, media, and health care industries. Meanwhile, Dubai International Financial Center Courts were overhauled for the first time since 2004, expanding their jurisdiction to hear more cases from outside the free zone.

X valuation holds for Alwaleed

Elon Musk bought $150 million in X shares last year at a valuation close to his 2022 purchase price, Bloomberg reported, citing Saudi conglomerate Kingdom Holding’s annual report. The firm, a longtime Twitter investor, is controlled by Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who personally invested $3 billion in X. The Saudi billionaire said last month that he never marked his stake down, and expects that payments and video integration will push the platform’s value to more than double the $44 billion Musk paid for it in 2022.

Kuwait strips citizens of nationality

The number of Kuwaitis that have been stripped of their nationality over the past six months — a purge that has accelerated since Emir Sheikh Meshal Al-Ahmad Al Sabah dissolved the country’s parliament in May. The government says the process targets those who have obtained the nationality illegally, but human rights groups say political opponents are affected, and that the country is moving toward autocracy. Kuwait’s economy contracted in each of the past two years, and reducing the number of citizens means fewer people will benefit from the “generous advantages offered by the Kuwaiti welfare state,” an expert told France24. But it remains unclear what the consequences will be: banks are preparing for potential loan defaults from those who lost citizenship, the Financial Times reported, and many of the newly stateless are considering emigration.

Diplomacy

• Qatar’s mediation efforts are expanding deeper into Africa. The presidents of Congo and Rwanda met with the emir yesterday after they both requested Doha to host talks aimed at building trust and addressing an insurgency in mineral-rich eastern Congo. — AP
• Behind the scenes, Oman continues to serve as a US backchannel to unsavory regimes. Last year, the sultanate reportedly attempted to broker a deal between the Biden administration and Bashar al-Assad, seeking information on American journalist Austin Tice — who has been missing in Syria since 2012 — in exchange for the withdrawal of US troops from Syrian oil fields. (Tice was allegedly handed over to Iran before the Assad regime’s collapse, to be used as leverage in Tehran’s nuclear negotiations.) — Le Figaro

Sovereign Wealth

• Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund is reportedly considering raising debt in Europe and the US this year and encouraging its portfolio companies like NEOM to borrow independently. The $925 billion Public Investment Fund aims to invest $70 billion this year and has already raised $4 billion in debt in January. — Bloomberg

Checking In

• Dubai Aerospace Enterprise, one of the world’s biggest aircraft lessors, is investing nearly $1 billion to modernize its fleet which is leased to 11 airlines in 10 countries. DAE did not specify the type of planes it’s buying but said the majority on order are from Airbus. — The National

(Paying homage to the ancient craft of Arab storytellers, we bring you the highlights from the region’s top podcasts — and in this case, the latest from the very non-Arab Tucker Carlson.)

Tucker Carlson has spent his entire career focused on US politics and culture wars, building a large and loyal conservative audience. This year, that audience got a taste of the Gulf. This year, he has visited Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, heaping praise on the region’s development and its leaders. (On the UAE’s Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed: a “wise leader unlike any other president I have met.”)

His latest interview was a sit-down with Qatar’s Prime Minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, who played a central role in the Israel-Hamas hostage release and ceasefire negotiations. Among the revelations: Sheikh Mohammed has a “personal relationship” with Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, attending his son’s wedding in February 2024. He also shared that Qatar built nursing homes to climb UN development rankings, which remain empty because of cultural norms favoring elderly care with family. People would be “publicly shamed” if they sent their parents to senior homes, he said, but Qatar “built it anyway to get the fancy branding.”

Call it an act of Wiz-ardry: a dead deal has come back to life, with a $9 billion bump. Google will buy cybersecurity startup Wiz for $32 billion, its largest ever acquisition and a sign of life in the dealmaking world.

Google executives are emphasizing the national security angle, Semafor’s Rohan Goswami reports.

“Organizations of all sizes — from startups and large enterprises to governments and public sector organizations — can use Wiz to protect” against cyberattacks, the company wrote in a blog post, a not-so-subtle reminder for staffers at State, Treasury, and Commerce, all of which suffered big breaches in the last two years.